Immigration and Customs Enforcement's contract with Paragon Solutions faces scrutiny over whether it complies with the Biden administration's executive order on spyware, WIRED has learned.
ICE's $2 Million Contract With a Spyware Vendor Is Under White House Review
Immigration and Customs Enforcement's contract with Paragon Solutions faces scrutiny over whether it complies with the Biden administration's executive order on spyware, WIRED has learned.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
A $2 million contract that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been paused and placed under compliance review, WIRED has learned.
The White House’s scrutiny of the contract marks the first test of the Biden administration’s executive order restricting the government’s use of spyware.
The one-year contract between Paragon’s US subsidiary in Chantilly, Virginia, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Division 3 was signed on September 27 and first reported by WIRED on October 1. A few days later, on October 8, HSI issued a stop-work order for the award “to review and verify compliance with Executive Order 14093,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson tells WIRED.
The executive order signed by President Joe Biden in March 2023 aims to restrict the US government’s use of commercial spyware technology while promoting its “responsible use” that aligns with the protection of human rights.
DHS did not confirm whether the contract, which says it covers a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training,” includes the deployment of Paragon’s flagship product, Graphite, a powerful spyware tool that reportedly extracts data primarily from cloud backups.
“We immediately engaged the leadership at DHS and worked very collaboratively together to understand exactly what was put in place, what the scope of this contract was, and whether or not it adhered to the procedures and requirements of the executive order,” a senior US administration official with first-hand knowledge of the workings of the executive order tells WIRED. The official requested anonymity to speak candidly about the White House’s review of the ICE contract.
Paragon Solutions did not respond to WIRED's request to comment on the contract's review.
The process laid out in the executive order requires a robust review of the due diligence regarding both the vendor and the tool, to see whether any concerns, such as counterintelligence, security, and improper use risks, arise. It also stipulates that an agency may not make operational use of the commercial spyware until at least seven days after providing this information to the White House or until the president's national security adviser consents.
“Ultimately, there will have to be a determination made by the leadership of the department. The outcome may be—based on the information and the facts that we have—that this particular vendor and tool does not spur a violation of the requirements in the executive order,” the senior official says.
While publicly available details of ICE’s contract with Paragon are relatively sparse, its existence alone raised alarms among civil liberties groups, with the nonprofit watchdog Human Rights Watch saying in a statement that “giving ICE access to spyware risks exacerbating” the department’s problematic practices. HRW also questioned what it calls the Biden administration’s “piecemeal approach” to spyware regulation.
The level of seriousness with which the US government approaches the compliance review of the Paragon contract will influence international trust in the executive order, experts say.
“We know the dangers mercenary spyware poses when sold to dictatorships, but there is also plenty of evidence of harms in democracies,” says John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab who has been instrumental in exposing spyware-related abuses. “This is why oversight, transparency, and accountability around any US agency attempt to acquire these tools is essential.”
International efforts to rein in commercial spyware are gathering pace. On October 11, during the 57th session of the Human Rights Council, United Nation member states reached a consensus to adopt language acknowledging the threat that the misuse of commercial spyware poses to democratic values, as well as the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. “This is an important norm setting, especially for countries who claim to be democracies,” says Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at international nonprofit Access Now.
Although the US is leading global efforts to combat spyware through its executive order, trade and visa restrictions, and sanctions, the European Union has been more lenient. Only 11 of the 27 EU member states have joined the US-led initiative stipulated in the “Joint Statement on Efforts to Counter the Proliferation and Misuse of Commercial Spyware,” which now counts 21 signatories, including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Japan, and South Korea.
“An unregulated market is both a threat to the citizens of those countries, but also to those governments, and I think that increasingly our hope is that there is a recognition [in the EU] of that as well,” the senior US administration official tells WIRED.
The European Commission published on October 16 new guidelines on the export of cyber-surveillance items, including spyware; however, it has yet to respond to the EU Parliament's call to draft a legislative proposal or admonish countries for their misuse of the technology.
While Poland launched an inquiry into the previous government’s spyware use earlier this year, a probe in Spain over the use of spyware against Spanish politicians has so far led to no accusations against those involved, and one in Greece has cleared government agencies of any wrongdoing.
“Europe is in the midst of a mercenary spyware crisis,” says Scott-Railton. “I have looked on with puzzled wonderment as European institutions and governments fail to address this issue at scale, even though there are domestic and export-related international issues.”
With the executive order, the US focuses on its national security and foreign policy interests in the deployment of the technology in accordance with human rights and the rule of law, as well as mitigating counterintelligence risks (e.g. the targeting of US officials). Europe—though it acknowledges the foreign policy dimension—has so far primarily concentrated on human rights considerations rather than counterintelligence and national security threats.
Such a threat became apparent in August, when Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) found that Russian government hackers were using exploits made by spyware companies NSO Group and Intellexa.
Meanwhile, Access Now and Citizen Lab speculated in May that Estonia may have been behind the hacking of exiled Russian journalists, dissidents, and others with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware.
“In an attempt to protect themselves from Russia, some European countries are using the same tools against the same people that Russia is targeting,” says Access Now’s Krapiva. “By having easier access to this kind of vulnerabilities, because they are then sold on the black market, Russia is able to purchase them in the end.”
“It’s a huge mess,” she adds. “By attempting to protect national security, they actually undermine it in many ways.”
Citizen Lab’s Scott-Railton believes these developments should raise concern among European decisionmakers just as they have for their US counterparts, who emphasized the national security aspect in the executive order.
“What is it going to take for European heads of state to recognize they have a national security threat from this technology?” Scott-Railton says. “Until they recognize the twin human rights and national security threats, the way the US has, they are going to be at a tremendous security disadvantage.”
Russian Propaganda Unit Appears to Be Behind Spread of False Tim Walz Sexual Abuse Claims
The Russian-aligned network Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos—including deepfakes—to push Kremlin talking points.
Photo Illustration: WIRED Staff; Getty Images
A Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote wild and baseless claims that Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz sexually assaulted one of his former students, according to several specialists tracking the disinformation campaign.
Experts believe that the campaign is tied to a network called Storm-1516, which has been linked to, among other things, a previous effort that falsely claimed vice president Kamala Harris perpetrated a hit-and-run in San Francisco in 2011. Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West.
The propaganda unit’s work has successfully reached the highest levels of the Republican party, with vice presidential candidate JD Vance repeating at least one of their narratives. NBC reported this week that the group has pushed at least 50 false narratives in this manner since last fall, which comes amid a broader Russian government effort to disrupt next month’s election with the aim of helping former president Donald Trump return to the White House.
Numerous figures in MAGA world boosted the Tim Walz assault claims, including Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate promoter who is now a member of Trump’s campaign team, and Candace Owens, the popular right-wing podcaster. The claims went viral on X last week, when an anonymous account called Black Insurrectionist posted screenshots of emails from a purported victim. Other X users quickly debunked the claims, citing formatting errors in the images that suggested the emails were fake, but days later another conspiracist posted a video on X claiming he had spoken to one of Walz's supposed victims on the phone—without providing any proof. The video racked up millions of hits.
Then, on Wednesday, a video claiming to show a former student of Walz describing abuse by the former football coach spread widely on X. According to a WIRED analysis using several deepfake detector tools, the video was created using AI. The video, shared by a prominent anonymous QAnon-promoting account, garnered over 4.3 million views before it was deleted.
The campaign to attack Walz predates the video; it traces back to John Dougan, a former Florida cop who now lives in Moscow and runs a network of pro-Kremlin websites. Dougan appeared on Zak Paine’s QAnon show RedPill78 on October 5 with an anonymous man named “Rick,” who said he was a foreign exchange student at Mankato West High School in 2004 when Walz was a teacher there. “Rick” then claimed Walz assaulted him. Dougan did not respond to a request for comment.
The claims, however, didn’t go viral until last week and the release of the deepfake video.
Darren Linvill, codirector at Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, tells WIRED that he immediately recognized this tactic as part of Russia’s well-established disinformation playbook.
“There is little doubt this is Storm-1516,” says Linvill, whose team uncovered the network last fall.
Linvill says the account that first shared the AI-altered video bears all the hallmarks of previous Storm-1516 campaigns. “It is standard for them to create an X or YouTube account for initial placement of stories,” says Linvill.
The campaign orchestrated by Storm-1516 often begins with the posting of a fake story and video from a whistleblower or citizen journalist, the US mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe outlined in July. Disinformation is “amplified by other seemingly unaffiliated online networks,” the US mission stated. The claims then take on a life of their own, shared and reposted by unwitting social media users who likely have no idea of where the videos originated.
The fake stories can also be picked up by other media outlets that cover viral social media stories. In the case of the Walz claims, they ended up on MSN, a news aggregation site owned by Microsoft.
In the past, Storm-1516 has relied on a network of fake news websites run by Dougan to push its narratives. On Saturday, a story that referenced the RedPill78 interview, the Black Insurrectionist posts, and the deepfake video was published on over 100 of Dougan’s websites simultaneously.
“We believe that it might be a coordinated campaign in [an] attempt to bring numerous false accusations of the same nature against Tim Walz through different channels and in different formats in order to bring an image of legitimacy to the narrative,” Liberty tells WIRED.
McKenzie Sadeghi, the AI and foreign influence editor at NewsGuard, agrees.
“The false narrative appears to be part of a wider campaign pushed by pro-Kremlin media and QAnon influencers ahead of the November 5, 2024, US elections aimed at portraying Walz, whose political appeal is as an everyman schoolteacher and coach, as a pedophile who had inappropriate relationships with minors,” Sadeghi wrote in an analysis of the deepfake video.
From the very beginning, the allegations against Walz were easily debunked. In his interview on the RedPill78 QAnon show, Dougan’s source claimed he was in the US thanks to the State Department–funded Future Leaders Exchange program, which allows students from countries formerly under the control of the Soviet Union the chance to study in the US for a year.
However, a spokesperson for the US State Department, told NewsGuard that it has no record of any Future Leaders Exchange student from Kazakhstan in Mankato area schools from 2000 through 2020. Mankato Area Public Schools communications director Mel Helling told NewsGuard the allegations were “outlandish.”
The baseless claims were shared by some far-right accounts in the days after the episode was published, but they didn’t really take hold until a week later, when the X account known as Black Insurrectionist posted a clip from Dougan’s RedPill78 episode. The clip was viewed over 800,000 times.
Google search trends data shows a huge spike in people searching for “Tim Walz pedophile” and “Tim Walz abuse” on October 13, the day the Black Insurrectionist account began posting their claims.
The Black Insurrectionist account is anonymous and launched a year ago; its followers include Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Roger Stone. The account’s bio reads: “I am MAGA.” It rose to prominence weeks before the Walz post, when it claimed to have been in contact with a whistleblower at ABC who said Harris had been provided with the questions ahead of her September debate with former president Donald Trump. Those claims were widely debunked by multiple major fact-checking and media organizations.
Last week, the Black Insurrectionist account shared screenshots of email correspondence the account had with an alleged victim on X. Almost immediately, the evidence was questioned when X users spotted a text cursor in one of the screenshots, suggesting that Black Insurrectionist was editing the document. Others pointed out that the date and time format shown in some of the screenshots was inconsistent with how they are displayed on real emails.
Black Insurrectionist initially defended itself before going silent. The account was deleted on Thursday.
The two dozen posts from Black Insurrectionist laying out their alleged evidence have been viewed over 33 million times, according to X’s own metrics, and have been shared on numerous other platforms, including Truth Social, Instagram, Telegram, and TikTok.
Among those sharing Black Insurrectiont’s claims was Paine, who hosted Dougan on his QAnon show. “I have no reason to doubt the veracity of this story,” Paine wrote on X.
The posts have also caught the attention of the wider MAGA universe in a way that Dougan’s initial claims didn’t. Prominent right-wing figures like Owens and Posobiec both flagged the “allegations” as something worth looking into.
Owens discussed the conspiracy on her top-rated podcast, with the episode racking up over 630,000 views on YouTube since it was posted on Wednesday.
Posobiec wrote on X that there were “lots of allegations going around regarding Tim Walz sexually abusing young student(s).” While he added that he didn’t “know about any of the recent allegations being made,” he did share a link to Dougan’s claims from earlier in the month.
When Harris replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in July, Russian-aligned propaganda networks struggled to mount effective disinformation campaigns targeting the vice president and her team.
But as Microsoft reported in the summer, those campaigns have started to find their footing. "The shift to focusing on the Harris-Walz campaign reflects a strategic move by Russian actors aimed at exploiting any perceived vulnerabilities in the new candidates," Clint Watts, head of Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center, wrote in August.
The best Bluetooth speakers have a place near and dear to our hearts, even as we've seen smart speakers improving their sound and portability. It's convenient to ask an Amazon Echo or Google Nest speaker to play your favorite track or tell you the weather, but smart speakers require stable Wi-Fi and potential privacy compromises. By (mostly) forgoing voice assistants and Wi-Fi radios, Bluetooth speakers are ultraportable, able to venture into the world, and can withstand rugged conditions like a sandy beach or steamy Airbnb jacuzzi. They'll work with any smartphone with worry-free connection, and the top options sound just as good or better than the average smart speaker.
Updated October 2024: We've added the Ultimate Ears Megaboom 4, an Honorable Mention for the Ultimate Ears Everboom, and updated copy from our latest reviews and testing results.
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Photograph: Ryan Waniata
Best Overall
Ultimate Ears Boom 4
We've had an Ultimate Ears Boom speaker atop our list for years now, and for good reason. The middle child of the UE portable lineup is fun and convenient, and it puts out some of the most pleasant and balanced sound for its size on the market. The Boom 4 (8/10, WIRED Recommended) is our latest pick, which adds a USB-C charging port (finally) and some minor upgrades to the drivers. Why mess with near perfection, right?
We've spent several weeks testing the latest Boom, and even as the world has changed around it, it still hits all the right notes for smooth, clear, and groovy sound. As before, the waterproof cylinder comes in multiple colors, is as durable as a chunk of wood, and gives you well over 100 feet of Bluetooth range. It has a two-year warranty and connects to the UE app to unlock an EQ, connection to other Ultimate Ears speakers, and more. —Ryan Waniata
The larger Sonos speakers are great if you want a speaker that usually lives inside, but they aren't the kind of thing you'd want to throw in a backpack. That's where the Roam 2 comes in (9/10, WIRED Recommends). This tiny tube has all the same smarts as its bigger Sonos siblings but with an IP67 dust- and water-resistance rating and 10 hours of listening time. It's about the size of a 16-ounce beer can and easily fits in cup holders and knapsacks alike. Sonos recently updated it with easier Bluetooth pairing via a dedicated button. —Parker Hall
★ A bigger portable Sonos: The Sonos Move 2 costs $449 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) and is a larger version of our top pick, the Sonos Roam. It's good if you're trying to fuel a real dance party, or if you want a mostly indoor speaker you can take onto the patio for get-togethers.
This sub-$100 speaker from Sony has become a go-to when riding to gatherings, thanks to a clever built-in strap, and the fact that it sits flat in a bike basket. It's got excellent battery life, is IP67-rated for dust and water resistance, and you can even link two of them together for stereo sound. It comes in a variety of awesome colors—my favorites include bright blue and bright orange—so you'll never be lost in the crowd. At just under 4 inches tall, it's small enough to take virtually anywhere, and it sounds a lot better than a speaker this size has a right to. —Parker Hall
Tribit has been raising its game in the portable audio category lately, and the Stormbox Flow (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is another great example of the brand’s portable prowess. The headline here is a rival-stomping 30 hours of max battery life, but the Stormbox Flow has plenty more to give, from an elegant yet weatherproof design to clear and punchy audio with thumpy bass to match. Maybe the speaker’s best feature is its low price of $80 or less, making it a fine fit for budget shoppers seeking a versatile speaker that keeps rocking long after the party is done. —Ryan Waniata
Tribit’s line of Bluetooth speakers sound a lot better than they should for the price. The StormBox is our favorite line. The new StormBox 2 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is largely the same as the original model, with dual-firing drivers and passive radiators in a 7-inch-long pill shape, but now it comes with upgraded controls and about 6 watts more output (up to 30 watts from 24). No, it can't fuel a trance dance party on its own, but its clarity is impressive, and it has a fun extra bass button that adds some surprising, if slightly muddy, thump.
With 24-ish hours of battery and an IPX7 waterproof rating—which means it's not dust-proof but can be submerged in water—it's a great companion for backyard tunes, a trip down the river, or other informal gatherings. —Parker Hall
24-hour battery life, USB-C charging, IPX7 water resistance
If portability isn’t of top concern, the 9-inch-tall Megaboom 4 is one of the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy. It's got clear and full 360-degree sound with plenty of low-end punch. Its drop-tested, weatherproof body is ready for any adventure, from surf to sand, and it offers over 150 feet of wireless range and up to 20 hours of battery life (more like 15 hours at volume). As with other UE speakers, the app adds great features, like the ability to connect multiple speakers in a group or two Megaboom 4s in stereo, adjust the EQ to taste, and wake the speaker from sleep. This rugged sound pillar is key to backyard jams, and well worth adding to your semi-mobile arsenal. —Ryan Waniata
★ Also Great: If you like to shake the room, even if the “room” is the great outdoors, the latest Charge from JBL ($180) is an ultra-portable banger. The speaker is IP67-rated against dust and moisture and offers great battery life. It has up to eight different finishes, and the ability to charge your phone while off the grid. Its tubular shape is designed to fit neatly into your hand, and just as important, it’s capable of kicking the party right off if you want it to. It’s not a blunt instrument, but its prodigious and frankly unlikely low-frequency response never stops surprising. If it’s portable party time you’re after, JBL has you covered in fine style. —Simon Lucas
JBL’s Clip 5 speaker is on the pricier side for a micro-size portable, but this is a classic case of getting what you pay for. I came to think of the sound as “fat” in a good way, with fuller bass and midrange frequencies than expected. The warmer sound still offers up rich detail and definition, and you can easily adjust it to taste in the JBL Portable app. I love using the speaker in the shower or even clipping it on a belt loop for yard work with its wide carabiner. Its stout body is dust- and water-resistant, and you’ll get a few advanced features like the ability to stereo-pair two Clip 5s or connect to other JBL speakers in Party Mode. Battery life is still middling, but a two-hour boost over the previous Clip (up to five hours with the Playtime Boost) provides a solid upgrade that makes the latest version more versatile than ever. —Ryan Waniata
12-hour battery life (15 hours with Boost), USB-C Charging, IP67 dust/water resistance
Brane Audio's Brane X speaker (9/10, WIRED Recommends) may seem like a shockingly pricey choice for a list of portable speakers, and it certainly is that. But this lunchbox-sized speaker has something no other portable we've tested has: a true, fully functional subwoofer. Thanks to Brane's mystifying RAD (Repel Attract Driver) technology, this speaker hits all the notes in your music, with unadulterated bass to bring more punch, gravitas, and sheer emotionality to everything you play.
The physics-defying subwoofer is joined by five drivers up top for impressive stereo expansion from a portable package. You'll get both Bluetooth streaming and Wi-Fi for plugging in at home, with support for AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect. The speaker lasts for 12 hours per charge, and gets an IP57 rating for dust and water resistance. You'll pay a lofty price, but the Brane X's clear and fantastically full sound gets you very close to the performance of a home audio system virtually anywhere you roam. —Ryan Waniata
We loved the first generation of the Tribit StormBox Micro for its easy-to-use silicone strap, which firmly held it against bicycle handlebars. In this update, Tribit has maintained the rugged IP67 rating against water and dust, and given us more battery life (around 12 hours), plus better bass. Also, the new Bluetooth 5.2 tech allows it to cast a wider signal than its predecessor, for when you're wandering around the yard or house. —Parker Hall
★ Also handlebar-ready: Bose also makes a great speaker of a similar design called the SoundLink Micro ($119), which was previously our top bike handlebar pick. It sounds about the same but is twice as expensive as the Tribit.
Positive Grid's Spark Mini (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is one of our favorite portable tools for musicians. You can pair your phone and play music via the cube-shaped speaker, but also plug in a guitar and blend yourself in to jam along. It's a perfect playing tool for campfires and backyard barbecues (eight hours of battery), and it even doubles as an audio interface if you need to scratch down an idea quickly. Because it's a guitar amp, the thing is much louder than it looks, easily able to fuel sing-alongs and shredding interpretations of The Star-Spangled Banner on Independence Day. —Parker Hall
8-hour battery life, USB-C charging, no labeled water resistance
★ Miniaturize it: Looking for a smaller way to shred on the go? The Spark Go ($129) is about half the size of the Spark Mini and comes with all the same great sounds, making it perfect for those who don't need much volume (or who plan to practice with headphones anyway).
The Bose SoundLink Max (9/10, WIRED Recommends) has quickly become my favorite speaker to drag along to outdoor events. It's not quite as big as the boombox that John Cusack would hold over his head in the 1980s, but this robust, rubberized speaker has bold sound and gets loud enough to woo your sweethearts with a love song. I also like that you can plug in your phone while it plays music, which is nice for those of us who are forgetful on our days off. Bold bass, even when outside, makes this good for dance parties in the middle of nowhere, and the handle is easy to tie up to packs, kayaks, or tents. —Parker Hall
With 24 hours of battery life, a rugged design, and a huge yard-filling sound, the Ultimate Ears Hyperboom (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is the perfect speaker for a party. Intelligent algorithms use data from a built-in mic to analyze where you've placed the speaker, ensuring the best possible sound, much like the Sonos Move. This is a better option than the Sonos if you have no interest in a future home network of speakers.
It doesn't have lights or cup holders like some other party speakers, but this is the best-made large Bluetooth speaker we've tested. It's been dropped from trucks, left out in the rain, and used at summer barbecues. It's even got a big silicon strap, inviting you to take it everywhere. —Parker Hall
24-hour battery life, USB-C charging, IPX4 water resistance
Quick one-touch pairing for both Apple and Android devices makes this an excellent speaker for folks in mixed-phone homes, or for anyone who just hates having to sit there forever and tell folks how to pair.
New drivers help keep the slick and polished treble and hefty bass you expect from Beats, but with a refined clarity and punctual definition to soup up everything you play. Beats didn’t stop there, adding a massive 24-hour playback time, great dust and water resistance, and features like the ability to charge other speakers and even play hi-res audio over the USB-C input. The design isn’t quite as robust or versatile as our top pick, but if you’re looking for big, polished sound and plenty of extras, the latest Pill delivers. —Ryan Waniata
Bang & Olufsen's round, IP67-rated Bluetooth speaker has a luxe price, but it's one of the best-sounding small speakers we've ever heard. With an included leather strap, excellent controls, and a super-durable build, it quickly became a favorite. If you're willing to spend up for a gorgeous portable in every sense, this is the tiny luxury option to beat. Plus, now that it's been around a bit, you can often find it on sale as low as $200, making it all the more enticing. —Parker Hall
Here are some other good speakers we've tested that didn't quite make the cut for our top picks:
Ultimate Ears Everboom for $250: UE’s Everboom speaker (7/10, WIRED Reviewed) is a great speaker that suffers from exceptionally tough competition from within. The updated Megaboom 4 offers very similar sound quality, features, and an ultra-rugged design, and it’s available for $50 less. The Everboom is still a fine speaker with excellent wireless range, a durable body, and plenty of battery life. Its sound is a bit more refined than the Megaboom outdoors and adds slightly more bass, so if price isn’t an issue, it’s worth consideration.
Urbanista Malibu for $150: We're not the biggest fans ever of the Urbanista Malibu's sound (7/10, WIRED Review), but it is notable in that it can be charged using solar power. That makes it a great speaker for those of us who are forgetful beach bums, or who only use a speaker like this on rare outdoor occasions, but stick to smart speakers or earbuds at home.
Sony Ult Field 1 for $130: The smallest of Sony’s Ult line speakers is a solid tubular portable up against very tough competition. It offers good sound with the “Ult” bass key engaged, but its midrange is less defined and dynamic than some of our favorites like the Ultimate Ears Boom 3 or JBL Charge 5, and it offers less battery life than either. Even the smaller JBL Flip 6 provides more presence and punch, and the Ult Field 1 is larger and more unwieldy, making it a solid but not outstanding choice.
Dali Katch G2 for $600: Danish specialist Dali's second generation of its remarkably elegant Katch speaker is a balanced, open, and extraordinarily positive listen. The Katch is able to extract a stack of information from even the meanest Bluetooth stream. Thanks to a choice of three finishes, a leather handle, and some typically Scandi industrial design, it looks the part as well as sounding it, but its price is very high.
Marshall Stockwell II for $200: If you're a music fan or just love the classic Marshall guitar amplifier design, this Bluetooth speaker is ready to rock. This small, relatively pricey speaker serves up smooth, balanced, and refined sound. The durable exterior is splash-resistant, the front and back have a steel grille, and the batter lasts around 20 hours depending on how much you tweak the stylish volume knob.
Ultimate Ears Epicboom for $300-350: The Epicboom is another excellent speaker from UE, with a curvy, pill-shaped body that's easy to transport for its size. It projects sound well in medium-sized outdoor spaces and can connect to other Ultimate Ears models inside the Boom app, potentially creating a party channel of up to 150 speakers. We also like the fact that this speaker is made from 100 percent recycled polyester fabric and 59 percent post-consumer recycled plastic.
DemerBox DB2 for $399: The DB2 is a great companion for your boldest outdoor adventures, in large part because it serves two purposes: It's a loud portable speaker with 40 hours of built-in battery life, and it's also a crushproof Pelican case. Load it up with any particularly fragile items, plug the bass port with an included rubber stopper, and you've got yourself an everything-proof box to keep your stuff safe.
Tivoli Model Two for $450: This radio has a gorgeous midcentury modern feel, and can sit both vertically and horizontally. It has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth streaming options, works with Google Chromecast and Apple AirPlay, and gets plenty loud. It’s almost a little too minimalist, with its single button and surrounding LED light to control and indicate modes, and it’s pricier than it needs to be, unless you’re looking for a design statement first.
Oontz Angle 3 Speaker for $40: This speaker has thousands of positive reviews on Amazon and is pretty great for a dirt-cheap Bluetooth speaker based on our testing. If you just want something to sing along with in the shower—and you're not a stickler for great audio quality—snag one of these.
Bang & Olufsen Beosound Level for $2,000: Bang & Olufsen takes a “buy once, cry once” policy for wireless listening. The Beosound Level is a crazy expensive Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker, but it is modularly designed and aims to be repairable forever. The 16-hour battery is replaceable, as are the wood and cloth elements. The gorgeous and great-sounding speaker could be a lifetime audio addition that can be upgraded as time passes.
Bose's SoundLink Revolve II for $219: Both this speaker and the Soundlink Revolve+ II ($329) aren't the cheapest, cutest, or most waterproof speakers, but we like their sound and their aesthetics. If you're not hard on your speakers, they're worth considering.
Sony SRS-XG500 for $498: This is a very loud boom-box-shaped speaker with up to 30 hours of battery life. It sounds and works great, but it just doesn't sound as good as the Ultimate Ears model on our main list, and we don't love the aesthetics.
Parker Hall is a senior editor of product reviews at WIRED. He focuses on audiovisual and entertainment products. Hall is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied jazz percussion. After hours, he remains a professional musician in his hometown of Portland, Oregon.
Writer and Reviewer
Ryan Waniata is a writer, editor, video host, and product reviewer with over 10 years of experience at sites including Digital Trends, Reviewed, Business Insider, Review Geek, and others. He’s evaluated everything from TVs and soundbars to smart gadgets and wearables, with a focus on A/V gear. He has a... Read more
Whether you went big with the Pixel 9 Pro XL or even bigger with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, we’ve got a selection of cases, including MagSafe, to kit out your new Android phone.
You see them every single day (almost). Our curated guide features personalized gifts for every office personality, from the foodies to the minimalists.
You see them every single day (almost). Our curated guide features personalized gifts for every office personality, from the foodies to the minimalists.
Photograph: Amazon; Getty Images
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Every office is a microcosm of personalities, making the quest for the perfect gifts for coworkers both exciting and baffling. You’ve got the snack lover, whose bottomless drawer of treats resembles a mini convenience store, always offering a morsel during that midafternoon slump. There’s the wellness enthusiast, ever zealous to remind us to take a break and stretch. And let’s not forget the Gen Zer, a beacon of pop culture, stocked with podcast recommendations and eager to draw you into their latest binge-worthy obsession.
Even if your team is remote, these quirks show in the little details: Zoom backgrounds that reveal snippets of our personal lives, Slack banter that often teeters the line between productivity and procrastination, and those GIFs we can’t help but overuse. Shopping for a coworker can feel daunting, but you probably know them better than you think.
To help you brainstorm and reflect on some of the characters in your workplace, we've curated a gift guide for coworkers that caters to every persona—from the foodie to the tech whiz. Don't see anything you like? Check out our other gift guides, from travel gifts to gifts for the outdoorsy hiker and backpacker.
Photograph: Omsom
For the Foodie
Omsom Best Seller Set
Editor Adrienne So discovered Omsom’s Asian flavors during the pandemic, and the Lemongrass BBQ quickly became a household favorite. This bundle includes 12 starters of Omsom’s most popular sauces: Japanese Yuzu Miso Glaze, Korean Spicy Bulgogi, and Thai Krapow. Each starter provides enough sauce for three to four servings, ideal for meal preppers, families, or coworkers who love to host dinner parties. Omsom also offers recipes to guide even the most amateur chef.
Note: While all Omsom Sauces are gluten-free, only the Yuzu Miso Glaze and Spicy Bulgogi are vegan. For more details on nutritional information, check out Omsom’s site.
Yeti Rambler 10 oz Wine Tumbler with MagSlider Lid
If you’re looking for the perfect gift for the tailgater in your life, the Yeti Rambler wine tumbler might be it. WIRED writer (and self-described wine slob) Boone Ashworth loves this tumbler for beach days and park picnics (9/10, WIRED Recommends). It’s vacuum-insulated, nearly spill-proof, and—most importantly—dishwasher-safe. The matte finish feels smooth and grippy, even for the sweatiest of palms. If you want the gift to be more personal, the travel mug is customizable on the Yeti site.
Name one person who doesn’t love a good snack. Seriously, I’ll wait. Each TokyoTreat Snack Box, which reviewer Louryn Strampe enthusiastically endorses, delivers 12 to 17 Japanese goodies. You can expect a melange of dagashi (Japan’s penny candy), a DIY candy kit, and more full-size sweet and savory munchies. Each month is themed, which feels like a festive surprise in the mail—especially during the holiday season. Each bundle also comes with a booklet that dives into the snackies and Japanese culture. You can purchase a three-month gift plan for $35.50 per box (plus shipping fees), which is a bit pricey but worth it for your favorite coworker. And hey, you might even get to sample some of those treats yourself. (Sharing is caring!)
Shopping for a tech-savvy coworker can be a challenge, but the Anker Nano Power Bank is a powerhouse present for anyone glued to their phone—essentially, all of us these days. Small but mighty, it packs 5,000 mAh of energy, enough to charge most smartphones during long workdays. There’s a built-in rotating USB-C or Lightning connector (MFi certified) and a USB-C port (with cable) to recharge the bank. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any cuter, it comes in soft pastel shades like lilac purple and sprout green.
If your coworker is all about understated, functional fashion, this 12-ounce waxed canvas tote is a thoughtful gift. It’s durable enough for work commutes or a farmers market haul; I’m using mine as a gym bag. The exterior pockets are clutch for quick-access items, while two interior pockets (one zipped) keep valuables compartmentalized. No flashy labels, but it screams high quality. I love mine in washed navy, but the earthy tones—cedar brown, palm green, and taupe—are just as chic.
For the coworker who’s inseparable from their reusable bottle, consider an accessory that elevates their daily hydration game. I would skip the gamble of gifting anyone their emotional support water bottle (a very personal choice) and offer a Calpak water bottle holder. It’s insulated and designed with pockets for keys and other small essentials. They can sport it crossbody or carry it from its top handle. Former reviewer Medea Giordano is obsessed with her lavender orchid fields model, and I love the limited walnut color. When in doubt, though, you can’t go wrong with classic black.
There’s something special about sipping from a mug that’s been handcrafted with care. Made from regional materials in Asheville, North Carolina, no two East Fork mugs are exactly alike—variations in the ceramic glaze are part of the charm and a reminder to appreciate the craftsmanship. It holds up to 12 ounces of coffee (or tea) and is available in eggshell, panna cotta, morel, amaro, and black mountain, as well as limited seasonal shades. It’s dishwasher- and microwave-safe (which we love), lead-free (brownie points), and fits an Aeropress.
If your coworker is always picking up a new hobby, the Woobles Crochet Amigurumi Kit is a great gift idea. My boyfriend got me Kiki the Chick, and I was instantly hooked (pun totally intended). With beginner and intermediate kits, the Woobles is an introduction to crocheting without committing to buying a mountain of supplies that you might end up being stuck with if the new passion project doesn’t stick. The step-by-step video tutorials are straightforward, and if they hit a snag, customer support is available via email. There’s a range of playful options, including special collabs like Santa Snoopy for Christmas or Minecraft-themed bundles for the gamer in your office. I would also purchase this as a stocking stuffer or a white elephant gift. Bonus: Once they’ve crocheted their Wooble, it can double as desk decor or even be unraveled and remade.
Boutayna Chokrane is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED. Before joining the Gear team, she was a music editorial fellow at Pitchfork. She also worked as a freelance journalist, covering fashion, art, and culture for Vogue, Rolling Stone, the Cut, and others. She graduated from Northwestern University with a... Read more
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One of the most beloved vehicles of the 20th century returns as an electric family fun machine. The high price and the low range might raise some eyebrows, but this van delivers.
The Volkswagen ID Buzz Is Finally Here. We Took the Electric Microbus for a Drive
One of the most beloved vehicles of the 20th century returns as an electric family fun machine. The high price and the low range might raise some eyebrows, but this van delivers.
Photography Courtesy of VW
With the 2017unveiling of the ID Buzz concept, Volkswagen announced that the iconic VW bus—forever a symbol of beachy road trips and 1960’s hippie freedom—was returning to the market as an EV. The hype machine went into overdrive.
Jump to 2024, and the vehicle that has been on roads in Europe for about two years is finally, finally, making its way onto US shores.
The cost (around $60K) is maybe higher than many had anticipated, and the vehicle's range (around 230 miles) is likely lower than many had hoped. Throw in a very long wait from the unveiling to its arrival in the marketplace, and the hype has dwindled. After spending a day behind the wheel of one, however, I can say that the ID Buzz has rekindled some of that excitement I felt way back in 2017.
Home on the Range
A VW Bus can't be mentioned without thoughts of tie-dyed Deadheads behind the wheel. Likewise, an EV can't be unveiled to the public without mention (and scrutiny) of its range. The ID Buzz arrives with EPA range numbers that are sure to harsh some mellows: 234 miles for the rear-wheel-drive variant, and 231 miles for the all-wheel-drive model. That’s on par for an electric van but far short of most family vehicles, which can top 300 miles per charge.
During my drive—which took me through San Francisco, across the Golden Gate to Marin County, on some Bay Area freeways, and along the region’s scenic backroads—the RWD version of the ID Buzz averaged 2.8 miles per killowatt-hour over 54 miles. I should note that automotive journalists tend to push vehicles to their limits, testing acceleration, stopping frequently, judging the handling, and so on. Based on the vehicle's 91 kWh gross capacity pack (of which, 86 kWh is available), the van was posting 240 miles of range. In regular use, it's likely it will hit 245 to 250 miles of range.
That discrepancy between reported range and real-world range isn't completely unexpected, as the Volkswagen Group has a history of underreporting its numbers. It did so with the Audi E-Tron, Porsche Taycan, and VW ID 4.
The AWD version posted an even more impressive 3.0 miles per kWh, bringing its range up to 258 miles, as measured over 40 miles. During this portion of the day's drive, more of the route was on freeways; I experienced moderate traffic during this period and rarely got above 65 miles an hour. In fact, my average speed was 42 miles per hour.
This real-world range should be more than adequate for hauling people and cargo around town. For road trips and camping—what it feels made for—the vehicle's very quick 200-kW peak charging rate (via a 400-volt architecture) does help reduce the pain of a sub-250-mile EPA rating. I'd rather have a vehicle with ID Buzz's battery capacity with 230 miles of range that charges up at a super-fast 200 kW than a vehicle with 300 miles of range that charges at a much slower 120 kW.
For those charging at home with a wall socket, the vehicle supports AC charging at up to 11 kW.
The Transporter
If you've ever had the pleasure of piloting an old-school VW bus (aka Samba, Bulli, Transporter, or Microbus), then you're aware how painfully slow it is to accelerate. It feels like the van’s zero-to-60 time is about three days. The ID Buzz's electric drivetrain solves that issue, even if it's never going to impress your Hyundai Ioniq 5N–owning friends. The “speedy” AWD trim level with 335 horsepower and 512 pound-feet of torque can motor from zero to 60 in about six seconds.
In a world where every EV needs to be able to pull a quarter mile in under 13 seconds, the leisurely acceleration of the ID Buzz is not only appropriate but welcome. It's a van. It hauls your whole family. Undue acceleration makes passengers uncomfortable and scatters your Kirkland Signature sundries around in the cargo area.
I found the added acceleration helpful in a few instances while overtaking other drivers, but the traction (combined with appropriate all-season or winter tires) will make the AWD ID Buzz a solid winter vehicle for those living in regions with snow and ice.
For a daily driver, I prefer the lighter RWD variant with its 282 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque. It's more engaging around corners, and the reduced heft of the vehicle gives it a more nimble feel. To be clear, the Buzz is not a canyon-carving machine, but I was impressed by its ability to handle the curves along the Bay Area backroads. As with all EVs, the low center of gravity afforded by the battery pack helps. For its intended purpose as a people mover though, the vehicle's suspension feels just a bit too stiff. Sure, that helps with cornering, but it translates to a slighter bumpier ride.
Slow Down There, Bulli
One interesting aspect of the ID Buzz is how Volkswagen handles passive regenerative braking. In the default comfort mode, it does not use passive regen. You can lift your foot off the accelerator and just coast. If you turn the steering column-mounted shifter to B, passive regen is engaged. It feels about mid-level compared to the similar feature on other vehicles; the van slows but not too much. There is no option for the type of one-pedal driving found in EVs from BMW, Chevrolet, and Tesla.
You can also access an even less aggressive passive regen when the vehicle is placed into Sport mode. Volkswagen says it's there to re-create the feeling of engine braking. The problem here is that all the driving modes are located in the vehicle settings portion of the infotainment system. Changing the drive mode requires two taps on the main screen. Sport mode makes only a slight adjustment to the acceleration mapping to increase the Buzz’s acceleration speed, so it's not really worth the hassle. Unless you turn this on before you embark, stick with Comfort mode.
So Much Room for Activities
The hype around the ID Buzz proves the power of nostalgia. And since the automotive world loves celebrating the past, automakers exploit that feeling in their designs. The DNA of those original VW microbuses is apparent in the ID Buzz. It has short overhangs, tons of windows, and a two-tone paint job. It's the microbus we never bought (but maybe wanted to) wrapped in a greener package.
Thankfully, just like the original Microbus, the ID Buzz is a wonder of utility. It has a whopping 146 cubic feet of cargo space. That's one cubic foot more than a Chevy Suburban and five more than the Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid. The RWD version comes standard with seating for seven. The AWD variant ships with captains chairs in the second row and seats six. All three rows can be slid forward or back to adjust for legroom and storage.
Unlike in most three-row SUVs, sitting at the back of the Buzz was a comfortable experience for my 6-foot-3 body. We also piled four WIRED colleagues into the van for a long loop around the neighborhood, and everyone had plenty of room.
With all the seats in use, the cargo space behind the third row is 18.6 cubic feet. That’s enough for a large grocery haul or several peoples’ luggage. The third row of seats can be folded down to make a flat surface in the back, and VW offers an insert for the rear cargo area that comes with two handy drawers. If you need more space, the third row can be removed entirely.
To help keep items from sliding around, the Buzz is equipped with velcro partitions that are stored in the walls of the cargo area. The center console is removable and moveable. You can move it from between the front seats to the second row in vehicles equipped with captain's chairs. Or just pull it out entirely. One nice touch: The dividers in the center console double as a bottle opener and an ice scraper.
Meanwhile, VW has gone full USB-C. Every seat gets at least one charging port. There are seven ports in total. There’s also one 15-watt USB port near the rearview mirror to accommodate a dash cam. A 110-volt, 150-watt power outlet is available under the passenger seat.
This all before you get into the world of aftermarket add-ons, where you are sure to find a plethora of options for the Buzz. It's all very clever, and a reminder that the VW bus is a canvas for your lifestyle.
Finally, the issues that have famously been plaguing VW’s infotainment system for years have been solved. The 12.9-inch display was easy to use, navigate, and more importantly, had little in the way of latency. VW has added ChatGPT integration for the voice assistant, but that requires a network connection, and I wasn’t able to fully test it, since most of the drive was in areas where cell service was spotty or absent. When I was able to test it, it returned a solid answer in a timely fashion.
Weirdly though, as an adventure vehicle, the Buzz does not ship with a dog or camping mode. When asked about this, Volkswagen said it was looking into it. More than a few journalists inquired about these features, which are found in Rivians and Teslas and make all sorts of sense for the Buzz. So don’t be surprised if those modes show up in an OTA software update.
How Much Again?
Which brings us to the second sticking point of the ID Buzz. The RWD Pro S model starts at $59,995, and this is because Volkswagen essentially offers a mid-level trim as the entry-level model. For example, this starting configuration ships with 12-way adjustable heated and vented front seats with a massage feature. Heated seats are also standard for the second row. It has three-zone climate controls.
All those USB ports are also standard. So is that 110V outlet. For those late night raves, a 30-color ambient lighting feature is standard.
Volkswagen is building all its ID Buzzes at a single factory in Hanover, Germany. This means US buyers cannot claim an EV purchase tax credit, since the Inflation Reduction Act requires vehicles to be assembled in North America to qualify for the tax break. If the automaker offers a lease, then the van does become eligible.
Volkswagen is aware this is a niche vehicle. While the buzz around the Buzz has died down, it will still likely sell out in its first year. VW would not comment on whether it will offer a cheaper trim option in the future or whether it plans to expand its production to the US.
Yet even with its lack of a true entry-level price and a range that, while underreported, is less than anticipated, the ID Buzz is exactly what it should be. It is a fun-to-drive nostalgia machine with enough storage and utility to make it a solid weekend hauler for families who enjoy an active lifestyle. And your five children will be quite comfortable in the back as you bore them to tears with your Summer of Love playlist.
for those with hearing challenges, there’d long been just one option for dealing with it: an expensive, bulky hearing aid prescribed by a doctor. That changed in 2022 when the US Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter hearing aid devices, giving consumers access to a vast and growing array of alternatives. Today, there are more hearing aids than ever, and they come in all different shapes, sizes, and most importantly, prices. How does a $100 hearing aid compare to a $5,000 prescription device for treating mild to moderate hearing loss? We’ve been testing products for the past two years to answer that question.
To help us out with this analysis, we brought in an expert. Licensed audiologist Ruth Reisman analyzed all of these hearing aids in a scientific lab setting, approving only models that amplified noises at safe levels. At the same time, I did hands-on (ears-on?) testing of these hearing aids around my home, outside, and in noisy environments.
We found plenty to like on the market today—and plenty of aids we’d avoid. The Jabra Enhance Select 300 has the current crown as the best hearing aid, with the Eargo Link and Sony CRE-C20 close behind. Here’s our complete roundup of the best prescription and over-the-counter hearing aids we tested and approved.
Updated October 2024: We've added the AirPods 2 With Hearing Aid Features and supplementary information.
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Every person is unique, and so are their hearing loss needs. Consider these factors to find a device that suits your needs and lifestyle. For more tips, check out our How to Buy a Hearing Aid guide.
Hearing aids shouldn’t bankrupt you. With such a steep price and minimal insurance coverage, it’s no wonder why so many people put off hearing loss treatment. Between audiologist visits, hearing aid orders, custom fittings, and maintenance, it’s justifiable that you might postpone treatment rather than fork over your credit card. It’s vital you know your budget before you start browsing for hearing aids. Many brands offer trial periods where you can test out the device for a set number of days and, if they’re a bad fit, return them free of charge.
It doesn’t have to be obviousthat you’re wearing a hearing aid. Despite cartoonish media depictions of hunched-over seniors screaming “WHAT?!” at every person who tries to talk to them, hearing loss doesn’t discriminate by age. With nearly 10 million Americans under the age of 60 affected, more should be taking advantage of the sleekly designed hearing aids on the market. Similar to the stigmas that keep people from seeking mental health treatment, the hearing-loss community is plagued by self-consciousness when it comes to wearing these devices. Modern in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids have come a long way in subtlety.
Opt for a professional hearing testover an online one. While online and app-based tests are a good way to dip your toes in and see whether you have hearing loss, a detailed audiogram that only an in-office visit can provide is a far better option. A hearing professional can use this audiogram to calibrate hearing aids to your specific needs.
How We Test Hearing Aids
Photograph: René Fielder
Our hearing aid testing was conducted by me and Ruth Reisman, a licensed audiologist. First, we sent devices to Reisman to test for effectiveness and safety. In her laboratory in Brooklyn, New York, Reisman used a Verifit 2 test box, also known as a hearing aid analyzer, to evaluate the performance of each hearing aid per the standards of the American National Standards Institute. She placed each device in the box, testing the hearing aids’ sound frequencies and listening comfort against the audiogram of a test patient with mild to moderate hearing loss. Reisman also used speech mapping to visually record the test box results, creating simple graphs that show how a hearing aid’s output would sound in a patient’s ear. These graphs even show how audible certain sounds are, including soft, moderate, and loud. The final parameter tested was how the devices fared when faced with extremely loud noises to ensure they could control for UCL (uncomfortable loudness), to avoid causing further damage. Based on these results, Reisman weeded out unsafe or poorly performing hearing aids and identified devices we would test further.
I configured and qualitatively tested each device in several settings, including my home, outdoors, and crowded environments, to see how well they helped treat my mild hearing loss while more deeply evaluating the user experience. I tried charging rechargeable models, changing batteries if disposable, connecting Bluetooth features, and cleaning the devices. I also compared them based on overall look and style—style matters.
We pooled together Reisman’s data with my firsthand observations to determine the recommendations.
What Are the Different Types of Hearing Aids?
Photograph: Halfdark/Getty Images
Before you choose which hearing aid is right for you, it’s best to familiarize yourself with the different styles on the market. While you may see multiple design styles, hearing aids essentially boil down to two main varieties: behind-the-ear and in-the-ear. Completely in-canal (CIC) devices also exist, but none are available over the counter. Here are common terms you’ll see:
Behind-the-ear (BTE) hearing aids, also known as over-the-ear, are probably the most traditional style. For these devices, an often bulky plastic case rests on the back of your ear while a tube delivers sound to an ear mold. Because they’re bigger, they tend to have the most technology and can cater to higher degrees of hearing loss. That said, they also tend to stand out more, which is a drawback for those looking for subtlety. Receiver-in-the-ear (RITE) hearing aids are essentially the same as behind-the-ear devices, with a receiver component that sits in the ear canal instead of being built into the case. Though the industry likes to tout them as a sleeker, less noticeable counterpart, in actuality they’re not much smaller than BTEs and function identically.
In-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids, also known as in-the-canal (ITC), are more comparable to wireless earbuds from a design standpoint. These devices allow for directional mics but also tend to collect moisture and wax.
Completely in-canal (CIC) hearing aids are the most “invisible” hearing aids on the market. This is because, as the name suggests, they’re completely submerged in your ear canal with nothing sticking out (besides a tiny string for removal). They typically have to be inserted by a professional and left in the ear for longer periods, and as noted, they are not available over the counter.
How Much Do Hearing Aids Cost?
How much money should you expect to spend on a hearing aid? The answer depends primarily on whether you’re looking into over-the-counter or prescription hearing aids. Unsurprisingly, the latter is a wallet guzzler, with average costs between $2,000 to $8,000. But OTCs can ring up quite a tab in their own right, and our most highly rated devices will still run you about $800 to $2,000 a pair. So far, we haven’t found an OTC device under this $800 price that is truly effective at treating hearing loss. In most cases, the $100 budget devices now flooding the market are too good to be true.
Fortunately, there are several methods to manage the high cost of a hearing aid:
Financing is available for virtually all reputable hearing aid companies, so you may not need to pay everything up front. Some plans are offered directly through the company, while others may require a third-party financing company like Klarna or Care Credit.
If you are over the age of 65, you may qualify for an add-on Medicare Advantage Plan (Part C) that may include hearing-related benefits. Most private insurance providers don’t offer hearing exam and device coverage, though some may have the option to add it as a supplemental benefit.
Medicaid coverage in certain states also pays for hearing aids, provided the prescription brand accepts it. Veterans may also qualify for hearing aid coverage through their VA benefits.
Some state governments have programs to help their constituents front the costs of hearing aids. Call or write to your state department to see whether this is a service they offer.
About Medicare and Insurance
Much like how it does not cover eyeglasses, Medicare does not cover hearing aids. That said, supplemental plans may include hearing benefits: Medicare Advantage Part C plans and many private insurance plans offer some hearing support, but coverage varies widely, so check with your provider before making that appointment. (Many states mandate that private insurance plans cover hearing aids, but a number of these are restricted to coverage for children.) On the plus side, standard Medicare plans (Parts A and B) do cover the cost of a hearing exam, but only with a doctor’s referral.
Many hearing aid providers are now providing financing for their products, usually at very low interest rates that let you pay for the product over up to three years. Medicaid may also help offset the cost of hearing aids, as may employer FSA and HSA plans.
How to Buy a Hearing Aid
There are two primary ways to buy a hearing aid: through a medical professional (the prescription route) or over-the-counter. Each has its pros and cons.
Prescription hearing aids are usually acquired through an audiologist. These specialists operate businesses ranging from sophisticated medical centers to small shops in a strip mall, usually emblazoned with a sign that reads “HEARING AIDS.” Again, this was the only way to acquire a hearing aid before 2022. An audiologist provides full service for your hearing aid from start to finish. They will test your hearing in a specialized room, physically examine your ears for medical problems, and suggest a hearing aid model. They will tune your chosen hearing aids and adjust them over time if things don’t sound right. The catch? Prescription hearing aids are expensive, anywhere from two to 10 times costlier than over-the-counter models. That said, for consumers who need hand-holding and significant fine-tuning of their hearing aids, professionals like this still have a function.
Over-the-counter aids can be bought through retailers online or offline, just like you would buy, say, a laptop computer. Different vendors offer different levels of presales support, and as the price of an OTC hearing aid goes up, you can usually expect a higher level of service. This may start with an online hearing test delivered to you via your computer or phone; these are not as good as an in-person test, but some can be surprisingly accurate. You may also get access to a remote audiologist who can meet with you over a video chat and fine-tune your hearing aid settings over the air. Ultimately, higher-end OTC aids offer a user experience similar to that of prescription aids, only one that is fully remote. At the low end of the hearing aid spectrum, you may get no service and support at all.
What Are the Different Types of Hearing Loss?
Medically speaking, there are three types of hearing loss. These are:
Conductive: Hearing loss related to the outer or middle ear.
Sensorineural: Hearing loss related to the inner ear.
Mixed: A combination of both.
All of these types of hearing loss can occur due to a variety of factors. Genetics and aging are two of the biggest and most universal: The older you get, the more the sensitive organs inside your ears begin to break down, and this can happen especially early and/or rapidly if you have a family history of hearing loss. The other all-too-common cause for hearing loss is exposure to loud noises, and it doesn’t take much. Many people exposed to prolonged, loud noises like concerts, industrial equipment, motorcycle engines, and sirens experience a gradual hearing loss due to the slow death of tiny hair cells in the inner ear. However, sudden exposure to very loud sounds like explosions and gunshots can cause instantaneous, irreversible damage by rupturing the eardrum (or worse).
There’s no easy way to know which type of hearing loss you have unless you’ve experienced some type of acute damage that has brought on a sudden change in your hearing. Whatever you suspect, it’s important you see a medical doctor to diagnose the issue fully.
Sensorineural is the most common type of hearing loss, and it can be caused by any of the aforementioned issues and more. Sensorineural hearing loss is permanent and can not be reversed, but it can be alleviated through the use of hearing aids. An audiologist can develop an audiogram for you that will show you how severe your hearing loss is and advise on what types of hearing aids might be best for treating it.
Conversely, conductive hearing loss is more medically treatable. This type of hearing loss is often due to a physical obstruction such as a buildup of earwax or fluid, or even physical damage to the eardrum. In these cases, a physician must examine the ear to determine the best course of treatment.
Hearing loss begins to be noticeable at the “mild” level. This is where you may find yourself mishearing words or asking people to repeat themselves. By the “moderate” level, understanding speech at normal speaking volumes is basically impossible without a hearing aid. It’s at this level where many people will walk into a parent’s home and find the television volume cranked to deafening volume, as it’s the only way for them to understand what’s being said. By the “severe” level, a patient will not be able to discern most sounds, even loud ones. “Profound” hearing loss is a condition approaching deafness save for the loudest of sounds, such as explosions.
The best advice is to seek hearing care early on—preferably at the “mild” level, before you begin to acclimate to a life of muffled speech and other sounds.
Self-Fitted vs. Preset Hearing Aids
Traditional hearing aids must be “fitted”—not just physically fitted to your ear anatomy but acoustically fitted to line up with the particulars of your hearing loss. This is because for most people hearing loss is not unilateral. Some may experience trouble hearing low frequencies, some may struggle with higher ones. (Mine has a dip somewhere in the middle.) By tuning the hearing aid to boost the frequency bands where your hearing is at its weakest, a precision hearing aid can improve your overall hearing quality without blowing out the frequencies where your ears are already working well.
With self-fitting hearing aids, you do this tuning yourself, at home. Typically, an app will walk you through a simple hearing test, and the results of that test are used to tune, or fit, the frequencies as discussed above. This is basically the same process a doctor will undertake in fitting a prescription hearing aid, only in a simpler and more automated manner.
Conversely, preset hearing aids can’t be tuned in this fashion. These considerably less expensive aids tend to boost all frequencies universally, though most will at least include a slider letting you prefer bass versus treble or vice versa. As a result, the improvement offered by a preset hearing aid will necessarily be less nuanced than that provided by a self-fitted aid, though if you have relatively mild hearing loss, the difference may be less marked than you think.
Rechargeable vs. Replaceable Batteries
In the beginning, replaceable (or disposable) batteries were the only option for hearing aids. These batteries are tiny cells smaller than a pencil eraser which you replace with a new one after they die. Hearing aid batteries can last for 70 hours or more, so you'd typically replace them once every week or two, depending on use. The longer lifespan means that if you are often away from a power outlet (or forget to charge your aids), you can worry less about running out of juice. (However, you will have to remember to carry spare batteries with you.) Hearing aids with replaceable batteries can also be (but aren’t always) smaller and cheaper, but the batteries are difficult to work with. Even if you have steady hands, it can be difficult to get a tiny battery in and out. These batteries are easy to lose and represent a serious health hazard if children or pets eat them. There’s also a small cost consideration: spare batteries aren’t free.
Rechargeable hearing aids use lithium-ion batteries and recharge via a case, much like standard Bluetooth earbuds. Battery life can vary widely, from over 24 hours to less than eight. That said, for most users, if the case is kept plugged in and the hearing aids are dropped into the case any time they aren’t in use, they should never have to worry about a dead battery. The case itself also has a battery; these can supply an extra three to seven full recharges to the hearing aids before the case batteries die. Again, this varies widely. Rechargeable aids are much more commonplace today and reflect the most up-to-date technology. You’ll have far more options if you go for a rechargeable model.
Photograph: René Fielder
Best Overall
Jabra Enhance Select 300
The latest model in Jabra’s elite line of hearing aids are not only the Danish company’s best offering yet, but they're also the best hearing aids on the market. With enhanced speech recognition and an excellent customer service network, the Enhance Select 300 (9/10, WIRED Recommends) stand out for their ability to match the quality of prescription hearing aids without requiring a prescription. These relatively small behind-the-ear (BTE) devices pair with the Enhance Select mobile app, allowing users to choose between four listening modes—All Around, Restaurant, Music, and Outdoor—though I found the All Around setting to work fine in most environments. Each mode can be customized and lets you further tweak preferences for speech clarity and noise filtering. The Select 300 are Bluetooth-compatible so you can stream media directly from a smartphone or tablet. And despite the rechargeable case being bulkier than most others on this list, it carries an impressive 72 hours of juice. Fully charged, the aids can last up to 30 hours off a single three-hour charging session.
The Enhance Select 300’s best feature are not what it includes, but what it lacks: hiss. Most hearing aid wearers (myself included) are all too familiar with the unpleasant hiss or static noise that sometimes happens when you increase a hearing aid’s volume beyond about halfway. This model virtually eliminates feedback at even the highest volume levels. But with prescription-level quality comes prescription-level pricing, and at $1,695 a pair, the Enhance Select 300 certainly aren't cheap. You can get financing for as low as $52 per month with a three-year warranty. You can shave off $200 if you opt for the entry-level Enhance Select 100 model, but you’ll be sacrificing features like access to Jabra’s audiologist staff and professional adjustments.
OTC. Compatible with iOS and Android. Battery life of 24 to 30 hours.
The unfortunate reality of hearing aids is that they’re expensive. And at $799, the Eargo Link (7/10, WIRED Recommends) are certainly not cheap. But when you factor in their excellent noise reduction and directional microphones, you start to see how they're a relative bargain. The in-the-ear (ITE) design resembles wireless earbud headphones more than hearing aids, which lends a degree of subtlety. They’re also sweat-, splash-, and dust-resistant, so you can sport them on a rainy day or while you work out. Perhaps the best feature of the Eargo Link are its media streaming capabilities. The hearing aids match the bass boost and sound-blocking features you’d find in premium noise-canceling headphones. You can stream your favorite music, movies, and other media via Bluetooth or take phone calls with a tap.
But these budget aids aren’t without their flaws. Unlike the much-pricier Eargo 7 model, the Link hearing aids do not work with a mobile app (the company says an app is on the way soon and will include customization options and a transparency mode). Anyone looking to adjust settings has to use touch controls on the Link to navigate through the four preset listening programs, which vary only when it comes to loudness and not much else. The Link also have a relatively weak rechargeable battery that lasts only around nine hours on a charge, so they’re not a great option for all-day wearers.
OTC. Compatible with iOS and Android.Battery life of nine hours.
With its Enhance Select 500 (9/10, WIRED Recommends), Jabra has taken its winning Enhance Select 300 and made it, well, one louder. It’s ever so slightly smaller (just 3 percent by weight) but otherwise a nearly identical device, right down to the color selection. The scant few added features include support for Bluetooth LE and Auracast, plus an added tap-to-call feature for Android users that is missing on the older 300, but I’m skeptical that most users will miss either one of them if they don’t opt for the upgrade.
Still, the 500 is smaller and therefore slightly less obtrusive, and that’s something that merits consideration. Most users will be perfectly fine with the 300, but if you’re so flush with cash that you won’t miss the loss of 300 bucks, then why not shoot for the moon?
OTC. Compatible with iOS and Android. Battery life of 24 to 30 hours.
As with any medical condition, you may not want every person you meet to know that you experience hearing loss. Unfortunately, quality hearing aids are as subtle as a pair of antlers. That’s where in-the-ear (ITE)—also referred to as in-the-canal (ITC)—hearing aids like the Sony CRE-C20 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) come in handy. Developed in conjunction with WS Audiology, the C20s are virtually invisible when worn, with a short retrieval wire hanging out that is noticeable only to someone actively looking for it. They’re also quite comfortable, performance-wise, the C20s offer a crisp sound quality that rivals some competitors charging twice as much.
The new C20 aids are an upgrade over our former top pick for this category, the CRE-C10s. The main difference—and almost the only difference—is that the new aids feature a rechargeable battery instead of requiring old-school replaceable ones. The weight of the units remains the same at just 1.34 grams, but battery life impresses at 28 hours per charge. And you can now top them up as often as you want. Sony’s rechargeable E10s offer a bulkier design, and you can still opt for the older C10s, which cost $200 less.
OTC. Compatible with iOS and Android. Battery life of 28 hours.
JLab has been a player in the earbud space for years, and with the Hear (8/10, WIRED Recommends), it launches its first hearing aid product—a pair of earbuds that do double duty for both improving your listening experience and streaming media from your mobile device. The earbuds are available in black, white, or beige, and while the 4.94-gram weight of each unit isn’t insignificant, they are reasonably comfortable even for moderate-term wear.
You can’t upload an audiogram to JLab’s app, but four operational modes and additional options like noise cancellation provide a quick way to tune your experience based on your environment. Naturally, the aids particularly shine when it comes to Bluetooth streaming, and they even feature an equalizer that can help you improve things further—though why the noise cancellation feature isn’t available while listening to music is a huge mystery. At this price though, the Hear over-delivers considerably.
OTC. Compatible with iOS and Android. Battery life of 10 hours.
OTC hearing aids have been around for more than two years now, but it might be Apple that reallykickstarts this market into gear, now that hearing aid features are available on its AirPods Pro 2 wireless earbuds (8/10, WIRED Recommends). A software update is all you need to turn your existing earbuds into hearing aids, giving them a second job of helping you hear better, even when you’re not streaming.
All the expected features common to OTC hearing aids are here and more, including the ability to upload an existing audiogram to tune them to your specific needs. The units quickly and effectively shift between hearing aid mode and streaming mode, and—unique to Apple—iOS now automatically applies your hearing aid settings to streaming media, which can make a difference to the clarity of dialogue and other sounds. For the most part, they do the job as intended.
Mind you, AirPods Pro 2 aren’t perfect as hearing aids, and they may not be the best choice for everyone. There’s a lingering hiss and some audio artifacts that need to be ironed out, and the built-in hearing test feature needs some work. With just six hours of battery life (plus 24 more in the case), they aren’t a great solution for people who need uninterrupted hearing help all day long. But the big news is that, at $249, Apple is now producing some of the least expensive products in the category, a position in which it rarely finds itself. As a first step toward investigating a solution for hearing loss, the price alone makes them worth strong consideration—presuming, of course, that you have an iPhone.
OTC. Compatible with iOS. Battery life of 6 hours.
We've reviewed dozens of hearing aids, and many of them are good but not great. Here are alternatives to consider:
Signia Pure Charge&Go IX for $4,000+: These prescription aids require professional fitting by an audiologist, either online or in person. These were initially some of the least impactful hearing aids I've tested; they didn't amplify conversations the way Signia promised. However, after significant tuning with Signia's in-house doctor and my own audiologist (they pored over settings in the Signia administration app not accessible to end users), they dramatically boosted conversation volumes. Clearly, you can fine-tune the listening experience a great deal. Unfortunately, the pricing is set by the audiologist and ranges from $4,000 to $10,000.
Eargo 7 for $2,650: The Eargo 7 (7/10, WIRED Review) offer high-quality sound, and you can connect with an audiologist to fine-tune them to your ears. There are a few listening programs you can cycle through, but I didn't find the need to switch modes—they provided well-amplified audio no matter what I was doing. The main issue? They're needlessly expensive.
Sony CRE-E10 for $1,100: The CRE-E10 (7/10, WIRED Review) aren't so much of an upgrade to the C20 we recommend above, but a different class of product. They're much more visible, though they look like a standard pair of Bluetooth earbuds. The E10 provide a comfortable fit but can get tiring after a long day. At least they use a rechargeable battery (via USB-C) with up to 26 hours on a single charge. You can control them only through Sony's app, and the hearing test lets you tune the frequency response of the aids. The audio experience is excellent at low volumes, though these aids have a bit of an echo and some additional noise. Still, I found it manageable. They do a decent job streaming media and calls via Bluetooth.
Elehear Alpha Pro for $459: If you suffer from mild hearing loss, the Elehear Alpha Pro (7/10, WIRED Review) are worth a look. They're traditional-looking hearing aids, and new users get a free 30-minute session with an audiologist to get them set up. There are several modes you can cycle through in the app to boost the volume and decrease ambient noise, plus you can tweak the presets Elehear offers, though a lot of this is trial and error. They have good battery life—around 20 hours on a single charge—and did not deplete for me after using them for a full day. You can pop them into a carrying case that can recharge them up to seven more times.
Photograph: Amazon
Avoid These Hearing Aids
Save Your Money
Just as important as what hearing aids to buy are what hearing aids not to buy. While some of these devices are affordable, most are lacking in quality or style. After our testing, we don’t wholly recommend these hearing aids. (Poor hearing aids can harm your hearing.)
Audien Atom One for $98: I had high hopes for these (5/10, WIRED Review) but they're impossibly cheap. The Atom One come up short on smart features, as there’s no way to fine-tune these devices.
Lexie Lumen for $699: These are comically large and dated. The case was physically falling apart during testing, which I wouldn’t expect from hearing aids at this price. Though they sound fine, they’re far from subtle and were plagued with connectivity bugs.
Olive Union Olive Max for $447: The Olive Max (6/10, WIRED Review) are big and look like a Bluetooth headset from the early 2000s (except for both of your ears). You can use an app to fine-tune the listening experience, but the overall hearing aid performance was mixed and I experienced a steady, buzzing background noise. They were pretty unusable in loud environments too. That said, they work well as standard wireless earbuds.
Ceretone Core One for $349: The mandatory app required to control these hearing aids is so basic that it's useless (5/10, WIRED Review). You can't tune the frequencies, and the listening experience is quite blunt. They're also not comfortable to wear for long periods.
Linner Nova OTC for $300: The AirPods-like Linner Nova (3/10, WIRED Review) amplify environmental sound and can double as streaming earbuds, but do neither particularly well.
MDHearing Neo for $297 and Neo XS for $397: Never mind the Joe Namath endorsement, these in-ear aids are incredibly uncomfortable and feature a wildly dated design sensibility. Screeching feedback at the slightest touch makes them untenable for even short-term use.
Christopher Null, a longtime technology journalist, is a contributor to WIRED and the editor of Drinkhacker. Chris is among our lead laptop reviewers and leads WIRED's coverage of hearing aids. He was previously executive editor of PC Computing magazine and the founding editor in chief of Mobile magazine.
Kwikset’s Newest Lock Has the Best Door Sensor I’ve Ever Seen
The Kwikset Halo Select arrives later this fall with Matter compatibility and a magnet-based, super-slim door-status sensor. Farewell, chunky sensors on my doorframe.
Photograph: Kwikset; Getty Images
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Kwikset is no newbie in the lock game. The company has been around since the 1940s making your classic locks and doorknobs and has been making smart locks under its Halo line since 2019. The Halo line originally consisted of two locks, the Halo Keypad and the Halo Touch. As of today there’s a third: the Halo Select.
The Halo Select packs a variety of updates and changes from the previous Halo models, including a quieter motor, unlocking via geofence, and a brand-new door sensor. It's also the brand's first lock compatible with Matter, the smart-home standard that allows smart-home devices to communicate without requiring multiple apps and hubs.
It took Kwikset a while to come out with a Matter lock after companies like Yale did it first. “This was not an easy feat for us," said Charlie Doughtery, Kwikset's electronics brand manager. "We as a company wanted to put out something that was great for consumers and offered a best-in-class consumer experience, and really made sure we got there before we decided to release to market.”
A lot of these features we've already seen in smart locks. But based on what we've seen so far, the Matter experience is one of the best I've seen, and the super-minimal door-status sensor is a particularly refreshing take in the world of smart sensors. More on that below.
Matter Time
Photograph: Kwikset
This isn't the first Matter smart lock, but the Matter experience that Kwikset designed into its app is pretty impressive.
Now, the whole point of Matter is that you shouldn't need separate apps to manage all of your devices. Kwikset still requires you to start with its app for the initial setup, but then you'll head into the Lock Settings and tap on the section labeled Matter, where you can easily switch over control to your smart-home ecosystem of choice. The app will prompt you to choose Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Home, or Samsung SmartThings when you switch over to Matter, and then will hand over the keys to your choice of ecosystem.
Photograph: Kwikset
After testing a few Matter devices, I don't mind starting with a brand's app, and I think it especially makes sense when installing a smart lock as opposed to, say, setting up a smart plug or smart light bulb. There are several more steps involved when you install a smart lock, and getting it wrong can mean no working lock whatsoever on your door.
The Kwikset app will also make it easy to switch back control to Kwikset and Wi-Fi if you decide Matter isn't for you. There are more features available if you choose the Kwikset-controlled path, like guest codes and using the included door-status sensor, but the lock does promise better battery life when using Matter.
Slim Sensing
Photograph: Kwikset
The most exciting addition to Kwikset's newest lock is the included door-status sensor. It works like any other door sensor—the sensors line up to tell you whether the door is closed—but it's a super-slim, discreet style compared to other options on the market.
Kwikset hasn't had door sensors before, but other smart-lock brands like Yale (which now owns August locks) have offered these for a while in conjunction with their locks, and plenty of other smart-home gadget makers have offered stand-alone door and window sensors for a similar experience. In both cases, it's a two-part sensor that sits on your doorframe or window frame and door or window, and usually requires a few sticky cushions to perfectly line the two parts up so that the sensor can correctly identify when the door is opened or closed.
Kwikset won't use that system. Instead, the brand designed a super-slim magnet-style sensor that you'll place into the doorjamb where it can connect with the lock. It looks incredibly sleek and seems like it would be much easier to place than trying to perfectly line up two separate sensors on a door and frame. Only testing will tell if this is indeed the case, and it's top of my testing list once it becomes available.
The Kwikset Halo doesn't have a specific launch date but is expected to be available at retailers like Lowe's and Amazon by mid-November and will retail for $279.
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Rating:
8/10
WIRED
Free upgrade if you already own the product. Very comfortable. Effective hearing support, particularly compared to other products at this price. Outstanding streaming experience.
TIRED
Some audio artifacts and hiss I couldn’t shake. Poor battery life amongst hearing aids. In-app hearing test didn’t cut it.
The first thing you need to know about wearing Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 earbuds and using them as hearing aids is that you will begin every conversation you have with some variation of:
Yes, I can hear you. These are hearing aids.
No, really. I know they are AirPods, but they’re also hearing aids.
Sorry, I’m not being rude, I promise.
This sorrowful introduction will play out by the millions in the months that come, now that the hearing aid features of AirPods Pro 2 have officially launched. Whether people will get over that hump and normalize the wearing of AirPods in social settings, at work, and in pretty much any other situation, so you no longer have to apologize up front—well, we’ll have to wait and see.
Photograph: Christopher Null
As a refresher, the Apple AirPods Pro 2 I’m reviewing here aren't new. They’re the same old second-generation wireless earbuds from 2022 you might already have (read our review here), but Apple has a new software update that enables hearing-centric features. This is a first for the industry and quite a unique development because suddenly millions of users will now find themselves with hearing aids in their pockets whether or not they want (or need) them.
The new features will be delivered as an iOS software update the week of October 28. I’ve been using the AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids for more than a week with a beta version of the software. It's worth noting that while you can use Apple's audio products with Android phones, all hearing aid features first need to be configured via iOS because they’re built into Apple’s operating system. Any further adjustments must also be made while connected to an iOS device.
Once you have iOS updated, getting started with the hearing aid features involves a process similar to the one offered by any number of over-the-counter hearing aid providers, only fully Apple-ified. A new page inside the AirPods Pro 2 menu on your iPhone directs you to “Set Up Hearing Aid Mode” and “Take a Hearing Test.”
Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu
This test is familiar, with pings delivered at various frequencies and volumes to each ear. The process takes about 10 minutes, and at the end of that time, you’re left with an audiogram that shows where your hearing is strong and where it's weak. Apple also calculates an overall estimate of hearing loss in each ear giving you an “at a glance” look at your hearing loss. In my first test, the system calculated a 25-decibel (dB) loss in my left ear and a 34-dB loss in my right ear.
These numbers didn’t line up perfectly with my most recent professional audiogram (24 dB left, 25 dB right), but I ran with Apple’s data for a while to see how things would go. The right ear was noticeably off. (Repeated attempts to take the hearing test resulted in an “Unable to Classify” error; a fourth test finally got things close enough.) Soon enough I updated the data by uploading my professional audiogram to iOS—simply snap a photo of it. Once this is captured, Apple provides a small table of hearing loss values you can tweak manually in case the scan has made a mistake, or you can start from the table and enter all the values by hand.
Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu
In my case, my audiogram didn’t have measurements at the very lowest frequency of 125 Hz, and the software assigned random values there instead of leaving them blank. That was an easy fix, and other than this tiny hiccup, the process of adding my audiogram was as convenient as any other hearing aid I’ve tested—and faster, since many providers require an audiologist to receive the scan and enter the tuning values for you, a process that can take several hours or even days.
The AirPods Pro 2's hearing aid mode only works when the “Transparency” Noise Control mode is active. This can be a little confusing (as is working with the rather large number of audio options now available), and I tended to accidentally switch modes when adjusting the earbuds. For various reasons, I was constantly double-checking the app to ensure I was in the right mode.
I tested the hearing aids in various settings, from one-on-one conversations and bingeing media to standing in the thick of a Chappell Roan concert. Overall, I experienced very good results. Conversation was easy and clear, even at low volumes, and I had less trouble with TV dialog and other often indistinct sounds. My initial settings generated a fair amount of hiss, akin to a distant, droning air conditioner. After updating the tuning with my professional audiogram settings and continuing to tweak settings, that hiss became less pronounced, though it was still noticeable.
A bigger issue I encountered was that the AirPods often boosted the volume on the things I least wanted to hear: a window air conditioner, water running from the faucet, keyboard clacks, or the fan on my PC. Sure, conversations sounded good, but the air purifier behind my desk sounded great.
There was also an annoying tendency for the volume level to suddenly jump up when the ambient volume level rose, creating a kind of “pop-in” effect that would sometimes affect only one ear and abruptly bring otherwise muted background noises front and center. The impact is more pronounced because AirPods Pro are only available with closed eartips (four sizes are included), which block out all ambient noise. It’s apparently a necessity for the kind of audio processing Apple does here, but it can create an isolating effect in addition to these kinds of weird audio artifacts, which is why I always prefer open eartips.
Photograph: Christopher Null via AirPods Pro 2 menu
Some of this can be tweaked by fine-tuning the experience, which you can do under “Adjustments” in the Hearing Assistance menu. There’s a lot to work through here, including a volume slider (which often made it louder than I wanted), left-right balance, a “tone” system that lets you tweak volume to be “darker” or “brighter,” and—critically—an ambient noise-reduction mode I highly recommend maxing out. A “conversation boost” setting is Apple’s version of a directional listening mode that lets you highlight sounds coming from in front of you. Notably lacking, however, are any environmental modes, which are the bread and butter of most hearing aid products, but which I didn’t overly miss on the AirPods Pro 2.
You can make some of these adjustments by manipulating the stems of the earbuds, which now have even more functions to master. These hardware operations can be finicky, and in almost every situation, the app is a lot more foolproof and easier to use.
One of the key touted features is the new Media Assist mode, which applies your hearing aid settings to streamed music, video, and phone calls. It makes a big difference and solidifies why these wireless earbuds are so beloved for their primary function of listening to stuff. I don’t think I’ve had a better earbud experience than when using AirPods Pro 2 with the Media Assist mode on after properly tuning them to my audiogram—and this is where closed eartips shine. While not part of the Hearing Aid system, I also found the new Hearing Protection features to be a godsend, turning what would have been a deafening concert experience into a pleasantly approachable afternoon.
Photograph: Christopher Null
It’s no secret that AirPods are big: At 5.32 grams each, they’re now some of the heaviest hearing aids on the market. And yet I found them incredibly comfortable to wear, even for long stretches, which is probably a big part of why they’re so popular. Unfortunately, battery life is rather poor as far as hearing aids go: a maximum of six hours per charge, with 30 hours total available if you include top-ups when they’re dropped into the USB-C case. That won’t cut it for all-day hearing aid wearers, many of whom will likely find they need to recharge twice in a single day.
But the AirPod Pro 2 are probably not designed for the all-day hearing aid user. Instead, they’re for someone who needs an occasional boost to their hearing, maybe in certain scenarios, who also just so happens to have these earbuds in their messenger bag. Just pop in the AirPods when you need them, then stow them away again when you’re in a friendlier audio environment or are working alone.
When bitcoin was on a hot streak, owners of small industrial facilities in Kentucky struck up crypto mining partnerships with Chinese companies. Then things fell apart.
In the Kentucky Mountains, a Bitcoin Mining Dream Turned Into a Nightmare
When bitcoin was on a hot streak, owners of small industrial facilities in Kentucky struck up crypto mining partnerships with Chinese companies. Then things fell apart.
Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty Images
On a dead-end road that climbs out of the tiny city of Jenkins, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Eastern Kentucky, there stands a large warehouse with a mint green roof. It shares the road with a few other businesses, but is otherwise surrounded by an expanse of open fields and tree-lined slopes. Inside, the warehouse is stacked high with racks on racks of computers—thousands of them. But none have ever been switched on.
The warehouse is owned by Mohawk Energy, a company cofounded by Kentucky state senator Brandon Smith in 2005, originally to resculpt landscapes disfigured by coal mining. After lying dormant for a period, Mohawk was reincarnated in 2022 when Smith struck a deal with HBTPower, a company then owned by Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, which wanted to use the warehouse for a bitcoin mining operation.
Under the deal, Mohawk promised to fit up its warehouse with the necessary power infrastructure, operate the equipment, and funnel any bitcoin produced to HBT. In return, HBT would pay Mohawk a monthly hosting fee, a cut of its mining revenue, and the associated energy bills.
Smith says he hoped the arrangement would generate tax revenue and create jobs for former coal miners, who could be trained as repair technicians. The coal industry departed Jenkins long ago, the reserves depleted, leaving people in search of work. More than a third now live below the poverty line, per the latest census data. “I liked the idea of going from one type of mining to a new type,” says Smith. “I thought, now in Eastern Kentucky we are going to have our time—we’re going to catch up and play a part in the tech future.”
But after a promising start, the relationship between Mohawk and HBT soured and then fell apart. “Nothing has ever been turned on. It’s a fascinating, almost Willy Wonka–type atmosphere when you walk through,” says Smith. “It has turned into a disaster.”
In November 2023, HBT brought a lawsuit in federal court, alleging that Mohawk had breached its contract on several fronts, including by failing to install the appropriate power infrastructure and secure certain power subsidies, and attempting to sell off the mining equipment. “Ultimately, the source of the current dispute is Mohawk’s basic failure to comply with its obligations, not only in a timely way, but at all in many regards,” says Harout Samra, a specialist in international dispute resolution at law firm DLA Piper and representative for HBT.
Mohawk sued HBT in return, contesting the various alleged breaches and claiming that HBT is delinquent on more than $700,000 in rent, labor, and fit-up costs. The company is also seeking damages relating to the loss of income over the term of the contract and the inability to bring a new tenant into the facility while the equipment remains on-site. “Huobi simply made a bargain it believes now is a bad one, and wants to get out of it without paying the funds it owes,” the filing states.
The legal conflict, which remains unresolved, is just one in a series of fights between Chinese companies and the owners of industrial facilities in the rural US over failed bitcoin mining partnerships. What looked to facility owners in Kentucky like an irresistible opportunity to tap into a new line of business in an otherwise fallow period has turned into a nightmare. They claim to have been saddled with unpaid hosting fees and energy bills worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with few options for recovering the money. The Chinese parties have been left equally displeased. “HBTPower obviously regrets that this opportunity has ultimately played out the way it has,” says Samra.
The bitcoin mining game—a race between computers to win the right to process a bundle of transactions and claim a crypto reward—is dominated by large corporations that own and operate industrial-scale facilities. But in 2021 and 2022, smaller-scale operations began to proliferate in the US countryside wherever there was available power, including in Kentucky. “A lot of mom-and-pop shops opened up,” says Phil Harvey, CEO at Sabre56, a firm that consults on crypto mining projects and operates its own facilities. “Appalachia has always been a good source of power.”
These small facilities were plugging a gap in the market. A ban on crypto mining in China had left businesses casting about for a new home for their many millions of dollars’ worth of mining equipment. “A lot of wealthy Chinese businesses were affected,” says Harvey. “Every minute these machines are down, they are losing revenue.” Meanwhile, as the price of bitcoin ballooned—and the profitability of mining along with it—mining firms and investor groups began to hoard large quantities of bitcoin mining equipment of their own, says Harvey, without considering where they might deploy it.
In an overheated market, holders of mining equipment jumped into hosting arrangements at short notice with owners of small facilities, some of whom had no prior experience and insufficient expertise, who agreed to install the equipment and run the mining operations on their behalf.
But the haste with which these hosting relationships came together, in the name of striking while bitcoin was hot, says Harvey, set many of the partnerships up for failure. There was limited due diligence conducted by parties on both sides, delays in kitting out facilities and deploying equipment, and disputes over payment terms, he says, among other points of friction. “It's a snowball effect where everyone just ends up getting pissed off with each other,” says Harvey.
Though the American market proved more expensive and bureaucratic than some Chinese businesses expected, says Harvey, problems were also caused by the hubris of facility owners, some of whom found themselves in over their heads. “It’s no joke running a [bitcoin mining] operation of any kind of scale,” he says. “Just because the Chinese are tough to do business with, doesn’t mean they are the ones in the wrong. I would say that blame is equally shared.”
The law firm acting for Mohawk in its dispute with HBT, Anna Whites Law Office, has represented multiple owners of small facilities in Kentucky in similar legal conflicts with Chinese partners. The cases differ from the Mohawk situation, says attorney Anna Whites, founder of the firm, but share a common thread: “We saw a pattern that [companies with ties to China] would ship in machines with uncertain provenance, mine very heavily for three months, then run without paying the bill,” she claims.
Some of the cases settled out of court; Whites is unable to supply the details for reasons of client confidentiality. But others continue to drag on.
Biofuel Mining, a company formerly co-owned by Smith, is involved in legal tangles with two companies that Whites believes to be run out of China: Touzi Tech and VCV Power Gamma. Although both are incorporated in Delaware, per SECfilings, they conduct business in Mandarin and cannot be reached at their listed US addresses, Whites claims. “It's pretty standard for the foreign entities from any country to get a short-term office so that they have less scrutiny from US investors and government agencies,” she says.
In both cases, Biofuel claims, the firms shipped equipment from China to its hosting facility in Eastern Kentucky, then walked away with the bitcoin produced, leaving behind hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid energy bills and hosting fees.
Biofuel reached a settlement with Touzi in early 2022 for $60,000, but despite having handed back the mining equipment, it claims not to have received the sum it is owed under the agreement.
In the still-unresolved spat with VCV, Biofuel received permission from the Martin County Circuit Court in Kentucky to sell off the mining equipment, claims Whites, to recoup a portion of the funds it is owed (she has not confirmed the amount), but she alleges that no damages have yet been awarded. VCV has stopped responding to communications, she claims.
Biofuel has since dissolved, put out of business by the failed hosting ventures. “I literally lost my house—I lost everything. It financially ruined me,” says Wes Hamilton, former Biofuel Mining CEO. “I’m just so frustrated about the whole thing.”
WIRED contacted VCV and Touzi for comment, but did not receive any response.
There are few financial recovery options for companies like Mohawk and Biofuel. The situation is made more difficult, as in the Mohawk case, if they are dealing with so-called special purpose entities. Because they are set up by their parent companies for a single specific business venture, these entities need not be concerned about their long-term ability to operate in the US.
“It certainly can be more difficult to recover damages from a non-US counterparty,” says Kim Havlin, a partner in the global commercial litigation practice at law firm White & Case. “There is certainly a risk that an entity that doesn’t need to be in the US may just ignore the case.”
Even if the Kentucky facility owners win out in court, it could be difficult to collect any damages awarded. “A judgment is essentially a piece of paper. Any judgment needs to be turned into assets or cash in order to be valuable,” says Havlin. If the opposing party refuses to pay up and has no US assets to collect against, sometimes that isn’t possible.
Almost a year after the dispute began, the Mohawk case is stuck in legal limbo. In a setback for Mohawk, the presiding judge recently denied its motion to dismiss HBT’s complaint, on the basis that it had failed to sufficiently back up its argument. The judge also pushed Mohawk’s countersuit into arbitration, a forum for resolving disputes privately instead of in open court. Non-US parties tend to prefer arbitration as a way to “remove a home forum from both sides,” explains Havlin. “You can pick an arbitral seat in neither country as a means of creating a neutral playing field.” A parallel federal court hearing is set for December to consider whether an injunction should be imposed on Mohawk, preventing it from selling off the remaining HBT equipment in its possession.
Smith has given up on the idea of recovering the full amount he claims to be owed. “We’re at the point that it’s almost silly to even be arguing about breaking even,” he says.
In an interview with PBS that aired in September 2023, touting the Mohawk Energy facility, Smith said he hoped to prove that not every business that blew into Jenkins would abandon the area. “I’ve stood at their ribbon cuttings, then watched them leave. I’d like to do something to let people know that not everybody is like that,” he said.
After the relationship with HBT collapsed last year, Smith faces the prospect of Mohawk becoming yet another false start. With the facility inactive, the company has been forced to dismiss the former coal miners brought on as technicians. (It is unclear how many people it employed.)
The Mohawk facility was perhaps never set to revitalize Jenkins in the way Smith hoped, anyway. “I would say that a rural community benefits very little from a bitcoin mining facility. In terms of job creation, it’s minimal in a lot of cases,” says Harvey, the consultant. “It's certainly not the savior to a dwindling community.”
Nonetheless, Smith remains hopeful of salvaging the crypto mining project, with a new partner. “I’m hoping that this gets settled in the way that it should and that somebody comes forward and lets us go through with the vision that we wanted for this region,” he says. “I hope every day that maybe some big company will see that there's a place ready to go in this part of the country.”
Otherwise, Mohawk’s dalliance with bitcoin mining will become a cautionary tale. “It was very hurtful to see these families lose their income. We were one of the biggest payrolls in Jenkins,” says Smith. “It adds insult to injury that I’m sitting here arguing in court.”
Donald Trump's opposition to “woke” safety standards for artificial intelligence would likely mean the dismantling of regulations that protect Americans from misinformation, discrimination, and worse.
Donald Trump's opposition to “woke” safety standards for artificial intelligence would likely mean the dismantling of regulations that protect Americans from misinformation, discrimination, and worse.
Photograph: Kevin Dietsch; Getty Images
If Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November, the guardrails could come off of artificial intelligence development, even as the dangers of defective AI models grow increasingly serious.
Trump’s election to a second term would dramatically reshape—and possibly cripple—efforts to protect Americans from the many dangers of poorly designed artificial intelligence, including misinformation, discrimination, and the poisoning of algorithms used in technology like autonomous vehicles.
The federal government has begun overseeing and advising AI companies under an executive order that President Joe Biden issued in October 2023. But Trump has vowed to repeal that order, with the Republican Party platform saying it “hinders AI innovation” and “imposes Radical Leftwing ideas” on AI development.
Trump’s promise has thrilled critics of the executive order who see it as illegal, dangerous, and an impediment to America’s digital arms race with China. Those critics include many of Trump’s closest allies, from X CEO Elon Musk and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to Republican members of Congress and nearly two dozen GOP state attorneys general. Trump’s running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance, is staunchly opposed to AI regulation.
“Republicans don't want to rush to overregulate this industry,” says Jacob Helberg, a tech executive and AI enthusiast who has been dubbed “Silicon Valley’s Trump whisperer.”
But tech and cyber experts warn that eliminating the EO’s safety and security provisions would undermine the trustworthiness of AI models that are increasingly creeping into all aspects of American life, from transportation and medicine to employment and surveillance.
The upcoming presidential election, in other words, could help determine whether AI becomes an unparalleled tool of productivity or an uncontrollable agent of chaos.
Oversight and Advice, Hand in Hand
Biden’s order addresses everything from using AI to improve veterans’ health care to setting safeguards for AI’s use in drug discovery. But most of the political controversy over the EO stems from two provisions in the section dealing with digital security risks and real-world safety impacts.
One provision requires owners of powerful AI models to report to the government about how they’re training the models and protecting them from tampering and theft, including by providing the results of “red-team tests” designed to find vulnerabilities in AI systems by simulating attacks. The other provision directs the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to produce guidance that helps companies develop AI models that are safe from cyberattacks and free of biases.
Supporters of these efforts say they’re essential to maintaining basic government oversight of the rapidly expanding AI industry and nudging developers toward better security. But to conservative critics, the reporting requirement is illegal government overreach that will crush AI innovation and expose developers’ trade secrets, while the NIST guidance is a liberal ploy to infect AI with far-left notions about disinformation and bias that amount to censorship of conservative speech.
At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, last December, Trump took aim at Biden’s EO after alleging without evidence that the Biden administration had already used AI for nefarious purposes.
“When I’m reelected,” he said, “I will cancel Biden’s artificial intelligence executive order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on Day One.”
Due Diligence or Undue Burden?
Biden’s effort to collect information about how companies are developing, testing, and protecting their AI models sparked an uproar on Capitol Hill almost as soon as it debuted.
Congressional Republicans seized on the fact that Biden justified the new requirement by invoking the 1950 Defense Production Act, a wartime measure that lets the government direct private-sector activities to ensure a reliable supply of goods and services. GOP lawmakers called Biden’s move inappropriate, illegal,and unnecessary.
Conservatives have also blasted the reporting requirement as a burden on the private sector. The provision “could scare away would-be innovators and impede more ChatGPT-type breakthroughs,” Representative Nancy Mace said during a March hearing she chaired on “White House overreach on AI.”
Helberg says a burdensome requirement would benefit established companies and hurt startups. He also says Silicon Valley critics fear the requirements “are a stepping stone” to a licensing regime in which developers must receive government permission to test models.
Steve DelBianco, the CEO of the conservative tech group NetChoice, says the requirement to report red-team test results amounts to de facto censorship, given that the government will be looking for problems like bias and disinformation. “I am completely worried about a left-of-center administration … whose red-teaming tests will cause AI to constrain what it generates for fear of triggering these concerns,” he says.
Conservatives argue that any regulation that stifles AI innovation will cost the US dearly in the technology competition with China.
“They are so aggressive, and they have made dominating AI a core North Star of their strategy for how to fight and win wars,” Helberg says. “The gap between our capabilities and the Chinese keeps shrinking with every passing year.”
“Woke” Safety Standards
By including social harms in its AI security guidelines, NIST has outraged conservatives and set off another front in the culture war over content moderation and free speech.
Republicans decry the NIST guidance as a form of backdoor government censorship. Senator Ted Cruz recently slammed what he called NIST’s “woke AI ‘safety’ standards” for being part of a Biden administration “plan to control speech” based on “amorphous” social harms. NetChoice has warned NIST that it is exceeding its authority with quasi-regulatory guidelines that upset “the appropriate balance between transparency and free speech.”
Many conservatives flatly dismiss the idea that AI can perpetuate social harms and should be designed not to do so.
“This is a solution in search of a problem that really doesn't exist,” Helberg says. “There really hasn’t been massive evidence of issues in AI discrimination.”
Conservatives worry more about AI companies’ overcorrections to this problem than about the problem itself. “There is a direct inverse correlation between the degree of wokeness in an AI and the AI's usefulness,” Helberg says, citing an early issue with Google’s generative AI platform.
Republicans want NIST to focus on AI’s physical safety risks, including its ability to help terrorists build bioweapons (something Biden’s EO does address). If Trump wins, his appointees will likely deemphasize government research on AI’s social harms. Helberg complains that the “enormous amount” of research on AI bias has dwarfed studies of “greater threats related to terrorism and biowarfare.”
Defending a “Light-Touch Approach”
AI experts and lawmakers offer robust defenses of Biden’s AI safety agenda.
These projects “enable the United States to remain on the cutting edge” of AI development “while protecting Americans from potential harms,” says Representative Ted Lieu, the Democratic cochair of the House’s AI task force.
The reporting requirements are essential for alerting the government to potentially dangerous new capabilities in increasingly powerful AI models, says a US government official who works on AI issues. The official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, points to OpenAI’s admission about its latest model’s “inconsistent refusal of requests to synthesize nerve agents.”
The official says the reporting requirement isn’t overly burdensome. They argue that, unlike AI regulations in the European Union and China, Biden’s EO reflects “a very broad, light-touch approach that continues to foster innovation.”
Nick Reese, who served as the Department of Homeland Security’s first director of emerging technology from 2019 to 2023, rejects conservative claims that the reporting requirement will jeopardize companies’ intellectual property. And he says it could actually benefit startups by encouraging them to develop “more computationally efficient,” less data-heavy AI models that fall under the reporting threshold.
AI’s power makes government oversight imperative, says Ami Fields-Meyer, who helped draft Biden’s EO as a White House tech official.
“We’re talking about companies that say they’re building the most powerful systems in the history of the world,” Fields-Meyer says. “The government’s first obligation is to protect people. ‘Trust me, we’ve got this’ is not an especially compelling argument.”
Experts praise NIST’s security guidance as a vital resource for building protections into new technology. They note that flawed AI models can produce serious social harms, including rental and lending discrimination and improper loss of government benefits.
Trump’s own first-term AI order required federal AI systems to respect civil rights, something that will require research into social harms.
The AI industry has largely welcomed Biden’s safety agenda. “What we're hearing is that it’s broadly useful to have this stuff spelled out,” the US official says. For new companies with small teams, “it expands the capacity of their folks to address these concerns.”
Rolling back Biden’s EO would send an alarming signal that “the US government is going to take a hands off approach to AI safety,” says Michael Daniel, a former presidential cyber adviser who now leads the Cyber Threat Alliance, an information sharing nonprofit.
As for competition with China, the EO’s defenders say safety rules will actually help America prevail by ensuring that US AI models work better than their Chinese rivals and are protected from Beijing’s economic espionage.
Two Very Different Paths
If Trump wins the White House next month, expect a sea change in how the government approaches AI safety.
Republicans want to prevent AI harms by applying “existing tort and statutory laws” as opposed to enacting broad new restrictions on the technology, Helberg says, and they favor “much greater focus on maximizing the opportunity afforded by AI, rather than overly focusing on risk mitigation.” That would likely spell doom for the reporting requirement and possibly some of the NIST guidance.
The reporting requirement could also face legal challenges now that the Supreme Court has weakened the deference that courts used to give agencies in evaluating their regulations.
And GOP pushback could even jeopardize NIST’s voluntary AI testing partnerships with leading companies. “What happens to those commitments in a new administration?” the US official asks.
This polarization around AI has frustrated technologists who worry that Trump will undermine the quest for safer models.
“Alongside the promises of AI are perils,” says Nicol Turner Lee, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation, “and it is vital that the next president continue to ensure the safety and security of these systems.”
A new document shows the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that Chinese investment in lithium batteries to power energy grids will make them a threat to US supply chain security.
US Government Says Relying on Chinese Lithium Batteries Is Too Risky
A new document shows the Department of Homeland Security is concerned that Chinese investment in lithium batteries to power energy grids will make them a threat to US supply chain security.
Jupiter Powers battery storage complex as seen in Houston, TX.Photograph: Jason Fochtman/Getty Images
Analysts at the US Department of Homeland Security shared an internal report to local agencies in August, warning them about the economic risks of using Chinese utility storage batteries. It warns that the dependence on Chinese batteries could hurt developing a secure supply chain in the US.
The document, first obtained by national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People and seen by WIRED, accuses Chinese companies of “using People’s Republic of China state support to quickly and cheaply enter the emerging US utility battery energy storage industry and create supply chain dependencies on China,” and asks that any suspicious activity be reported.
Specifically, the report alleges three companies—Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Limited (CATL), Build Your Dreams (BYD), and Ruipu Energy Co. Ltd. (REPT)—have “benefited from the various forms of state support and leveraged this to further business strategies for gaining US market share.”
Currently, CATL and BYD lead the global energy storage battery market by far, with 40 percent and 12 percent market shares, respectively, according to South Korean energy research firm SNE Research. Eight out of the 10 top companies in the industry are from China, so there are few alternatives to turn to when building grid storage.
The report says it builds on previous documents that analyzed Chinese “state-supported firms’ use of noncompetitive tactics in the electric vehicle and battery supply chains.” DHS did not respond to a request for further comment.
In 2022, CATL entered a deal with Primergy Solar to build the largest US solar and storage project in Nevada, which came online this year. Its battery products have also been used by Duke Energy, a North Carolina–based utility company, although the latter dropped CATL as a supplier for marine base electricity storage after concerns around national security were raised by, in part, lawmakers in Washington.
In an emailed statement, Fred Zhang, a CATL spokesperson, rejects the categorization that the firm has relied on state support to gain an edge. “CATL has achieved tremendous growth through continuous innovation, farsighted strategic planning, and a commitment to high-quality products at a reasonable cost,” the statement says.
BYD and REPT did not reply to WIRED’s request for comment.
Following efforts to curb Chinese EV companies’ competitiveness, the US government is now also concerned about how domestic utility companies could become too dependent on Chinese batteries for energy storage.
The US government has in recent years started to catch up in the battery industry. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill set out investment tax credits and other economic incentives to build up energy storage capacity in the country. In September it awarded another $3 billion in incentives to projects that boost domestic production of batteries.
These incentives are also the focus of the DHS report, which alleges that Chinese-based firms are targeting US incentives to further grow their market share. “BYD’s public website as of spring 2023 highlighted how US state incentives can make BYD utility storage systems an attractive investment,” the report claims. (WIRED was unable to find the BYD website referenced in the report.)
The CATL spokesperson says the company “does not receive any US federal or state incentives.”
As the US utility grids incorporate more renewable energy sources like solar and wind, it’s essential to build up a battery storage capacity that can store intermittent energy supply for times of heightened demand. And Chinese companies have dominated the global industry of producing lithium batteries for this job. These companies make over 80 percent of the EV battery cells in the world, and they had plans to invest another $2 trillion in 2023 into new production capacities inside and outside the country.
“Chinese original equipment manufacturers currently supply about 90 percent of the energy storage system batteries, actually a larger share than for EVs,” says Vanessa Witte, a senior research analyst at Wood Mackenzie who focuses on US energy storage. “There is a huge oversupply right now, partly due to softening EV demand, along with a number of Tier 2 and Tier 3 OEMs that have started new manufacturing facilities. The excess supply is a big reason the prices are so low.”
These batteries are essential for global energy transition, and Chinese battery companies see them as an opportunity to widen their product markets. They’ve become such an important industry that the Chinese central government emphasized their importance for the first time in its annual government report in March.
The battery supply chain has also emerged as one of the top economic and security concerns around China in the eyes of the US government. The Biden administration has so far raised a 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made lithium-ion EV batteries (and even higher for the EVs they power.) The government has also repeatedlysounded alarms about the national security threats of having Chinese-made equipment and parts in domestic infrastructure.
So far, the particular conversations around energy storage batteries have mostly surrounded cybersecurity, worried that the components could contain backdoor access for hacking like those that have been suspected in Chinese-made port cranes. Those concerns are “a bit overstated,” Witte says. “There haven’t been any incidents that would lend one to believe the battery management system is sending data to China or could disrupt our infrastructure.”
There have been several political efforts to restrict the use of Chinese-made batteries in the US. The pentagon will be the first to be banned from buying batteries from six Chinese companies, in an order which will become effective in 2027, but some congressmembers are still asking for CATL and other Chinese companies to be added to trade blacklists, and there’s a bill in Congress that would ban DHS from procuring Chinese batteries.
But the DHS report shows that the government is also looking at whether the dominance of Chinese batteries can be an economic issue.
“It is simplistic to see this as just unfair competition due to Chinese government support, as a lot of what China did, such as creating demand for batteries through EV subsidies, is not unlike what we see in the West today,” says Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage research at BloombergNEF.
The pricing advantage that Chinese battery companies have are also the results of harsh market competition and a more established battery supply chain in China, she says, and these battery companies are willing to squeeze their own margins in exchange for keeping their market shares. “We think the US government's attempts to support a healthy battery industry domestically has been incredibly generous through the incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” says Sekine, “but it may still be challenging to compete on cost.”
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Rating:
7/10
WIRED
Interchangeable lens system opens up new shooting possibilities. Better battery life. Magnetic mounting system (finally). Optional USB-C pass-through charging. Excellent Log video support. Much improved HDR mode with HLG.
TIRED
Same sensor as previous two generations. Same processor as previous three generations. Low-light/indoor performance is poor compared to competition.
The new GoPro Hero 13 is the first significant change for GoPro's flagship action camera in years. The company has added an interchangeable lens system, along with new Macro, Ultra Wide, and Anamorphic lenses, plus a set of four neutral density filters. The Hero 13 Black even autodetects which lens is attached and changes settings accordingly.
While this new system is very slick—and opens up shooting possibilities that simply don't exist in prior models—the sensor and processor remain the same as what we got in the Hero 12 and Hero 11, and in the case of the processor, the Hero 10. In many ways, the GoPro Hero 13 Black feels like it is laying the groundwork for the Hero 14 Black, which makes it a great choice for first-time customers, but hard to recommend as an upgrade.
Lucky 13
First the good news: The interchangeable lens system is awesome. There's always been the Max Lens mod, which offers a wider field of view, but the new system is more than just an expansion of the Max Lens. The key is that the camera auto-detects the lens or filter you have attached and automatically adjusts settings.
You can override these adjustments, but it's nice to pop on one of the four ND filters (four, eight, 16, and 32) and have the camera automatically adjust settings to get a motion-blur effect rather than tweaking things yourself. (Motion blur and Hypersmooth stabilization do not play well together; search the internet for suggestions on getting the best results.)
GoPro has released three "lens mods” along with the Hero 13 Black: Ultra Wide, Macro, and Anamorphic. I had a lot of fun with the Macro lens, which allows you to use your GoPro for close-ups (close focus distance is 4.33 inches), something no other action camera can pull off. The Ultra Wide is nice for anything where you want a wider field of view, like hiking. Probably the most exciting of these lenses is the Anamorphic, which I was unable to test because it won’t be available until early next year.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
While the fully kitted-out GoPro with three lenses and four ND filters will cost over $800, you don't have to buy them all. Indeed I suggest avoiding the bundles. Get the GoPro Hero 13 Black for $400 and add lenses down the road if you feel the need.
The other big news in this release is a magnetic mounting adapter. It functions very similarly to what DJI and Insta360 have long offered and makes it much easier to move the camera between mounts. As with those other systems, GoPro suggests not using the magnetic mount system in high-vibration or high-speed environments.
Outwardly the Hero 13 Black looks a little different than its predecessor. It thankfully ditches the blue-speckled paint job of the Hero 12 Black and adds a noticeable heat sink to the front, just below the lens. Otherwise, though, it is the same size and even fits in the same Media Mod as previous models.
The disappointing part of the Hero 13 Black is that it uses the same 27-megapixel sensor and the same processor as the Hero 12, and, for that matter, the Hero 11. Yes, this is the third GoPro in a row with this sensor and processor, which makes this a less compelling upgrade than it would be with a bump in sensor size or output image quality. This means video footage still maxes out at 5.3K resolution, and most other video and photo specs remain unchanged. That also means the sensor's flaws, aka the shoddy low-light performance, are still present.
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
GoPro has a few tricks here and there worth mentioning, though. As someone who likes to handle color grading in postproduction software, the new, improved Log video support is very welcome. I would go so far as to say this is the best Log profile I've seen in an action camera. The Hero 13 Black also has a new slow-motion burst mode which can record 5.3K footage at 120 frames per second. It pulls that off for only five seconds, though, so this is best used for situations like your kid going off a jump on their bike or diving in the pool—quick moments you want to slow down later.
Another big video improvement is HDR support and hybrid log-gamma (HLG) HDR video. The Hero 12's HDR support was not great, but HLG HDR is a widely used open source HDR format that offers much better compatibility with non-wide-color-gamut displays. The footage also looks much better than the previous version.
I said above that the Hero 13 is the same size, which is true on the outside, but internally that's not the case. GoPro has enlarged the battery compartment to fit a bigger battery that the company claims will last 10 percent longer than the Hero 12's battery. I found this to be roughly true. Shooting a 4K video with the Hero 13, I consistently coaxed it for about an hour and 45 minutes, sometimes up over the 1:50 mark if there was more ventilation (riding a bike for example).
GoPro Hero 13 Black: Ultra Wide Lens
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
GoPro Hero 13 Black: Macro Lens
Photograph: Scott Gilbertson
The opposite was also true. Shooting through the window of a vehicle for instance, with almost no ventilation, saw recording time go down to around an hour. I have not had a chance to test it in cold weather, but GoPro claims improvements there too. Overall that's about 15 to 20 minutes longer across the board than I generally get with the Hero 12, which is great, but it's well behind the new DJI Action 5 Pro, which had no trouble running well over 2 hours and 30 minutes in the 4K test. The Hero still has the worst battery life in the action camera market and the new battery, while improved, also means your old batteries won't work, adding a sizable cost to those looking to upgrade.
One interesting battery-related addition to the Hero 13 Black is the new magnetic charge door, which GoPro calls Contacto. It's a USB-C pass-through door with a magnetic charger on the outside, allowing you to power the GoPro using an external battery without keeping the battery door off. There have long been USB-C pass-through doors available from third-party sellers, but this is the only one I'm aware of that's waterproof, which means if you forget you have it on and jump in the ocean, you won't fry your GoPro.
I should also note that all battery testing was done with GPS disabled because, yes, GPS is back. After removing it to improve the battery life in the Hero 12, GoPro has changed its mind (or at least listened to user feedback, which to judge by Reddit, must have been deafening).
Lastly, another impressive feature is a new Voice Audio mode that prioritizes your voice, muting ambient sound. It's not nearly as good as what you'll get from a dedicated wireless mic setup, but it's better than previous GoPros. Unfortunately, you still need the Media Mod kit to add a separate mic, which remains my biggest gripe about the GoPro.
Should You Buy a Hero 13 Black?
If you're new to action cameras, the Hero 13 Black is worth considering. Despite being two years old, the sensor has the highest resolution video available in an action camera at the time of writing, and it also has the best image stabilization I've tested. The new interchangeable lens system provides options no other action camera can match (though the price will add up).
However, if you're going to be shooting indoors a lot or at night (think of those soccer games that run well into twilight this time of year), then consider the DJI Action 5 Pro instead (full review coming soon), as it has much better low light and indoor video capabilities.
If you already have a recent generation GoPro, well, as I noted above, this feels a little like it's just setting the stage for the Hero 14. The successor may have more sweeping changes, like a new sensor and processor, along with these interchangeable lenses, which might be worth the wait.
For many listeners, bookshelf speakers provide the quintessential audio experience. Mixing a potent cocktail of performance, value, and convenience, these versatile little blocks play a key role in nearly every corner of the audio spectrum. Bookshelf speakers can be the answer for all your sonic needs, from TV shows and movies to Spotify streams and vintage vinyl.
Thanks to their compact size and versatility, there are tons of bookshelf speakers at various prices, making it tough to sift through the crowd. To help you make the proper purchase, I’ve tested dozens of speakers fit for any setup or scenario—with the help of my fellow audiophile colleagues. Whether you’re after a budget buy for a lonely amplifier, a self-powered all-in-one solution, or something to take you to that next plane of sonic bliss, you’ll find the best bookshelf speakers below.
Updated October 2024: We've added the SVS Ultra Evolution passive speakers.
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Tips Before You Shop for a Bookshelf Speaker
Photograph: KEF
You'll see loads of terms and specs as you hunt for bookshelf speakers. Here are a few things to know beforehand, the first of which explores the differences between active versus passive speakers.
Active (aka “powered”) speakers do not require a separate amplifier or receiver. Instead, they have built-in amplification (which powers the speakers and makes the sound loud enough to play through them). These amps are often customized for their specific drivers and cabinetry, which can deliver performance benefits. Modern powered speakers may have other perks, like fully wireless designs (apart from power cables) and wireless streaming from your phone via Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth. They’ll typically provide physical connections for CD players, turntables, subwoofers, and TVs.
Passive speakers are wired speakers that require a separate amplifier or receiver and speaker cables for playback. This creates more steps since you’ll need to find an amplifier with matching specifications (more on this below). The benefit is that passive speakers are more versatile and dependable, letting you mix and match them in multiple systems and configurations. When treated properly, passive speakers can last for decades.
Impedance is a specification measured in ohms referring to a speaker’s resistance to electrical current flow. Most passive speakers have a nominal impedance rating (essentially the average impedance) of 4, 6, or 8 ohms; the lower the number the less resistance to electrical current. You can think of it like plumbing pipes: the wider the pipe, the less opposition to pressure you get and the more flow, or electrical current, you’ll need. The upshot is that 4-ohm speakers are the hardest to drive, requiring the most power. Much is made about impedance in audiophile circles, but most good amplifiers and receivers are rated for both 4-ohm to 8-ohm speaker pairs, with appropriate wattage ratings to match. For 6-ohm speakers, you’ll generally want an amplifier with a 6-ohm or 4-ohm impedance rating and enough power to match the speaker’s requirements (available in the manual or website).
Speaker power requirements: Passive speakers include specifications for their minimum and maximum power requirements, measured in watts. Without getting too deep into the weeds about amplification types and power efficiency, a good rule of thumb is to pick an amplifier with a wattage rating per channel that closely matches your speaker’s power requirements for its nominal impedance rating. If you’re having trouble finding the right match, you’ll generally want an amplifier that meets your speaker’s minimum power requirements for its nominal impedance rating.
Tethered connection options: Most modern amplifiers and active speakers offer multiple wired connections like analog input (RCA or 3.5 mm), digital optical input for CD players or TVs, and a subwoofer output for connecting a powered subwoofer. Many new systems connect to TVs over HDMI ARC too, letting you control basics like power and volume with your TV remote. They may also offer a phono input for turntables, though many of our favorite turntables come with a built-in phono preamp (or you can purchase a separate phono preamp as needed).
Wireless connection options: Nearly all active speakers—and many modern amplifiers—support Bluetooth. Wi-Fi connectivity is also increasingly standard, letting you access services like Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, AirPlay, and Google Cast. Wi-Fi is generally preferred over Bluetooth for its improved sound quality and conveniences like uninterrupted streaming and expanded wireless range.
Everything You Can Do From the Chrome Address Bar (Besides Run Searches)
Chrome’s omnibox is not just for typing out URLs or searching Google. Use it to take notes, write emails, and chat with Gemini.
Illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images
It tends to really be used only by developers, but the address bar and search box up at the top of the Google Chrome interface has an official name: the omnibox. It reflects the multipurpose capabilities of this little text field, as it's able to do much more than look up web addresses and run searches on Google.
When you know about everything the omnibox can do, you can save time jumping between different apps and sites, and get things done more quickly. What's more, Google is constantly adding new features to the omnibox. Most recently, as you might expect, the company added an integration with Gemini AI.
Here are a few of our favorites—just remove the quotes around the text examples below to get the code you need to type into the omnibox.
Chat With Gemini
We've just mentioned the most recent upgrade to the Chrome omnibox, so we may as well start here: Type out "@gemini" in the address bar, then a space, then your prompt for the chatbot. Hit Enter, and the query will be run in Google Gemini. Chrome will use whatever flavor of Gemini is included with your Google account (so Gemini Advanced, if you're a paying user).
Carry Out Conversions
Any kind of conversion you need, the all-powerful omnibox can take care of for you: Turn kilometers into miles, or dollars into euros, or days into months. All you have to do is type out the desired conversion in a way that makes sense. Chrome is pretty good at working out what you're trying to do, so for example, you can type “£34 in us dollars” and it will know you’re looking for a conversion. You should immediately see the result appear underneath—you don't need to hit Enter.
Run Basic Calculations
On a related note, you can run simple calculations from the Chrome omnibox as well, no need to press Enter. Anything like "24*8" or "352+91" will instantly show a result underneath—as will "24*8-352+91"—and you can use brackets if you need part of the sum worked out first. If you do press Enter afterwards, the full Chrome calculator opens up.
Check the Weather
Want to know the weather, anywhere? Chrome will tell you.Courtesy of David Nield
Chrome can report on live weather conditions from the omnibox. Just type "weather" (no need to press Enter) to see a mini description of the current conditions in wherever you are. Note that this only gives the most accurate result if Chrome has access to your current location. Add a town, city, or postal code on the end to see conditions in that place, and hit Enter after your query for a more detailed forecast.
Search Your Bookmarks
You can search through your Chrome bookmarks right from the omnibox, without having to open up the browser’s integrated Bookmark Manager. You do need to type out the name of one of your bookmark folders first, so Chrome knows what you're trying to do, and you can then write any word or phrase to see instant results for pages saved in that bookmarks folder.
Make Notes in Chrome
If you need to quickly get some thoughts down in Chrome and you don't want to launch a separate program, the code "data:text/html, <html contenteditable>" followed by Enter will give you a blank tab you can type into. It's not the most advanced of text editors—there's no formatting and no auto-save—but it works well as a quick solution for jotting down notes.
Get Quick Definitions
If you're unsure what a particular word means, Chrome can tell you, and you don't need to leave the page you're currently on to find out the definition. Type "define", then a space, then the word you want the meaning for, and a basic definition pops up underneath. To get back to the URL of the page you were viewing, press Esc to remove the definition.
The Chrome omnibox can define any word for you.Courtesy of David Nield
Create New Documents
You can quickly create new documents, spreadsheets, or presentations in Google's online office suite by typing "docs.new", "sheets.new", or "slides.new" into the omnibox. When you press Enter, the new file is created in the Google Drive for the current Google account. To create a new file in a new window (leaving the current one alone), use Shift+Enter after your command.
There's a similar trick for creating new emails in the default email client on your computer: Type "mailto:" and hit Enter to open a blank email. You can also prepopulate the To: field with the destination address by typing it after the colon, if you know it. To set the default email client on Windows, choose Apps > Default Apps from Settings; over on macOS, pick Mail > Settings > General from Apple Mail.
Run Instant Google Searches
On many Google searches, you get the answer above the list of links on the results page. These “instant” searches work in Chrome too. Ask about facts (like the height of the Eiffel Tower or the mass of Jupiter), celebrity ages, the days until a certain date, current stock prices for a company, the size of countries, the authors of books, and so on.
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Rating:
8/10
WIRED
Cheap. Easy to set up. HDMI eARC connection means that it works with every modern TV remote. Compact main bar and subwoofer are discreet. Bold simulated DTS:X and Dolby Atmos sound, even without upfiring speakers. Easy to mount to Vizio TVs.
TIRED
Wired satellite speakers can be annoying to place, depending on your space. No optical input for older TVs.
It shouldn’t be this cheap to thoroughly enjoy the sound of John Wick as he breaks a real-life NBA player’s neck with a book. Yet for around $200 (a penny less if on sale), you can get a 5.1 soundbar system from Vizio that lets you hear the subtle crack of his vertebrae as a mildly stabbed Keanu Reeves twists his leather-bound enemy just so, in the intro to the franchise’s third installment.
This kind of immersion used to cost you hundreds more, if not thousands. Now, just plug in a single HDMI cable to an eARC port of a chosen screen (or in my case, the 130-inch Hisense laser projector I'm also testing) and you can be drawn further into the action than you possibly could with a single central soundbar.
As long as you’re ok with a few stray wires from the surround speakers to the subwoofer, it’s as easy as setting this system up, plugging it in, and enjoying your favorite content with new immersion. Been on the fence about getting a soundbar because you’re saving up for a full-blown home theater? Start here and you’ll buy yourself a long time to upgrade.
You’re Surrounded
A slim, nondescript main soundbar that’s 33 inches long pairs with small wired surround speakers and a wireless subwoofer to create this 5.1 system. The only aftermarket thing you might need is a pair of stands for the rear speakers, unless you plan to mount them to the wall (it has included mounting holes for this).
One benefit that is exclusive to those who have Vizio TVs is the quick fit system, which allows you to pop this bar easily onto the bottom of compatible late-model Vizio TVs. This makes this bar a particularly good choice if you are also considering a TV like the latest Vizio 4K model we just reviewed (7/10, WIRED Recommends).
Photograph: Parker Hall
The main downside to this system, and the reason why it costs significantly less than other options I’ve tested that produce sound of this quality, is those wires. They’re about 20 feet long, which is long enough to work in most average living rooms or apartments, but having to route cables is much more annoying than wireless systems.
Once you get it set up, it’s as easy as plugging in a single HDMI cable from the main bar to your TV, at which time the magic of eARC takes over and you can use the bar to your heart's content. As long as your TV is new enough to have ARC or eARC, you can use your TV remote (or in my case, a TV and then laser projector remote) to adjust the volume of the soundbar without having to touch the Vizio remote that’s included.
That remote does let you set things like sound settings and volume levels, so I recommend that you use it at least once to set up everything in your space. You can also control the soundbar via the Vizio app on your phone, if you pair to it via Bluetooth. If you go Vizio-to-Vizio, you also get an integrated audio settings menu on the TV, so you don’t have to mess with the app or the remote. That's nice, but you're probably gonna set and forget this anyway.
A Dive Bar
The best part of the Vizio 5.1 bar, in fact, is how good it sounds with minimal intervention. You just plug it in, press Play, and enjoy surround sound that's shockingly dynamic and immersive for a cheap soundbar that should sound tinny and awful.
The small surround speakers are the real highlight, more than powerful enough to give me a nice immersive experience when watching action flicks like John Wick or Master and Commander, where cannonballs whiz past my head even in standard 5.1.
Photograph: Parker Hall
The Vizio 5.1 bar supports DTS:X and Dolby Atmos, but it doesn’t actually have up-firing speakers to bounce sound off your ceiling and do a “real” height channel. Instead, Vizio uses virtualization to simulate these channels. It’s hilariously convincing for a bar this cheap, and a testament to how good audio processing has gotten in general.
Can you tell the difference between this and more expensive bars from other brands, or even from Vizio itself? Totally. This set sounds a bit boxier in the midrange, and it doesn't have the same channel separation or depth of flavor you really want when listening to music—I'd stick to bookshelf speakers.
Photograph: Parker Hall
The subwoofer adds a lot of low end, but it won't ever actually rumble your seats, unless you live in a derelict building. “Theater-like” is a really apt descriptor of this system. As an approximation of a high-end experience for less than a quarter the cost of higher-end Dolby Atmos-enabled soundbar systems, it does pretty darn well.
When compared to what you have in your new screen, this Vizio 5.1 setup utterly blows standard TV speakers out of the water. I'd even rather have this system than many stand-alone bars, which simulate surround sound, but don't perform as well as a bar with actual satellite speakers.
As I have come to expect from Vizio in this space, its cheap soundbar system remains my favorite new model this side of $500. It's just hard to expect more from a product that does its job reasonably well for this cheap. If I had just bought a cheap TV and wanted to experience surround sound, this is where I'd start.
Blackout curtains are useful for a range of reasons—most obviously, blocking out sunlight, but also for reducing outside noises, temperature control (whether that be insulating for winter months or blocking out light to keep the room cooler in the summer), and ensuring privacy.
I wanted to try a myriad of curtain options that promised total blackout in a variety of different fabrics like polyester and velvet and with various hanging options, including pockets, grommet holes, clips, loops, and even suction cups. Many of these curtains had additional lining to further insulate against temperature and aid in noise reduction, so I also measured outside sound and temperature regulation.
I also took into account the ease of setup and hanging, and if there were multiple options for hanging, including using a double bar, attaching clips, or using pockets versus loops to see which way blocked sunshine the best.
I tested these on two windows, one that faces southeast and one that faces east—both get a huge amount of morning sun and, as a result, the room can get quite toasty during the summer months. I tested each curtain for a week, measuring how well it worked at all hours, including early mornings with the harsh sun, afternoons, nighttime, and when my door was closed and light was turned off. Although I live on a relatively quiet suburban street, I also monitored noise levels with the various curtains, since several on this list claim to be noise-reducing.
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How to Shop
Nearly all of our picks come in various sizes, most often with differing lengths. One panel will cover a standard-size window, but you may want to buy two for coverage and a more polished look. It's a good idea to measure your window's dimensions, especially from the curtain rod height to the floor, to ensure the curtain isn't billowing on the ground or hanging up too high off the floor.
How to Install
The curtains we tested all come in various forms, with grommet holes, pockets, clips, loops, and even suction cups for hanging options. Many have multiple hanging options—it's all dependent on personal taste. I tested each way, but usually ultimately used the pocket to hang the curtain on a rod because it helped keep the curtain more flush to the window and wall. This allowed more coverage and less of a gap where sunlight could leak through.
Once you've installed your curtain rod above the window (a relatively simple task if you have the tools), you'll want to take out the curtain from packaging and read the directions on care to see how to best take out the wrinkles (or not). If the curtain has multiple hanging options, you'll choose which you'd like, but even the most complicated hangs with hooks or clips shouldn't take more than five minutes. (Except the Amazon travel panel with suction cups; that one took about 15 minutes and was a pain.)
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Best Overall
Pottery Barn Peace & Quiet Noise-Reducing Blackout Curtain
This 50- by 96-inch curtain from Pottery Barn is a bestseller, and I see why. It’s made of 100 percent polyester and is thick, with a white liner facing the outside of the window to reflect light (rather than black, which absorbs light). It has a three-in-one pole top, meaning there are three hanging options: a rod pocket, back tabs, and ring top. The curtains also come with drapery hooks that can be used with Pottery Barn drapery rods (curtain rings sold separately). The curtain is also available in 84-inch and 108-inch lengths. They're fair trade, sustainably sourced, and Oeko-Tex certified, meaning the product has passed safety tests and is safe from over 1,000 harmful substances. They're machine washable on a cold, gentle cycle and can be tumble dried on low heat and ironed.
Made of dense polyester fibers, they feel thick and durable. I already had a curtain rod up, so installation was easy, and I chose to hang them using the pole into the rod pocket so that the curtain was more flush and there was less of a gap for light to get in. These curtains, like the others tested, were hung on windows that face harsh east and southeast morning light, and the room can get very bright and warm. These curtains were excellent at blocking light, and although I live on a relatively quiet suburban block, I do think the thickness and denseness of the curtain helped reduce outside noise. The room stayed noticeably darker, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me at night. I’d recommend these Pottery Barn curtains to anyone, especially those with kids or babies, to create a darker, more quiet sleeping environment.
These luxe worn-velvet blackout curtains from West Elm are 48 inches wide and 96, 108, or 84 inches long (I tested the latter). Though the panels are called “worn velvet,” they're made of polyester and have more of a tight, thick weave pattern that is double-sided with a back paneling to block out even more light and noise. They have a rod pocket or back tabs to create a bunched or pleated look. The curtains can be purchased as single panels or in sets and should be washed in cold water, tumble dried on low, or dry-cleaned, and they can be returned within 30 days.
These curtains are the most expensive on our list and have the luxe feel to match. They are heavy, thick, and durable, with an off-white polyester blackout liner that further helps to block light and create a barrier for outside noise. I tested them in royal blue (hung it by the rod pocket), and I loved the rich vibrancy of the color. I was blown away by its ability to completely darken my room, even in the harsh morning light. At night, I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, and even though I don’t have tons of outside street noise, I did notice that the thick curtains muffled sound. These are definitely the thickest and heaviest of our picks and did an excellent job of making the room pitch-black, even on the sunniest mornings.
Sun Zero Oslo Theater Grade Extreme 100 Percent Blackout Rod Pocket Curtain Panel
The least expensive option on our list, this curtain is 52 inches wide and 96, 63, or 84 inches long (what I tested) and is made of polyester but has a really silky feel. It comes in multiple colors, but I tested the black option. The curtain comes with only one curtain panel, so if you want a set it ends up being closer to $40. Unlike the other favorite options on this list, this isn’t double sided and doesn’t have a special backing to further protect against the sun. However, it’s super thick, with a tight fabric weave, and claims to be noise-reducing, though there wasn’t a noticeable difference in outside volume to me.
It’s also a thermal curtain, meaning that it’s specifically designed to help insulate windows and regulate temperature. The weather was mild when testing, so I didn’t feel a difference, but the thickness of the curtain makes me think that it would be able to deliver. There’s a hemmed pocket at the bottom of the curtain and two rod pocket options for hanging on top; one is smaller and very close to the top of the curtain, and one is a bit lower and wider. I chose the bottom option to help give more material coverage at the top of the window to further block out light, but it didn’t have the option for rings or attachments like others did. During the day, the room was extremely dark—the only light that came in was a sliver crack from between the curtain and wall, and at night it was pitch-black. Like, abyss dark. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of me. The machine washable curtain isn’t the most stylish on the list, and the silky polyester isn’t my first fabric choice, but holy moly did it make the room a cavelike pitch-black.
This 78- by 50-inch budget portable travel blackout curtain from Amazon Basics does what it set out to do—make the room a whole lot darker on the go. Using suction cups on all four sides of the paneled curtain (it can affix to pretty much any glass window), it also has velcro paneling between the suction cups to help close any gaps where sunlight could leak in. Because the curtain can be stretched or shrunk using the velcro fasteners, it has a funny, billowing shape which isn’t the most aesthetically appealing. The window covering comes in a snapped portable case so it’s easier to travel with, although it was nearly impossible to fit back into the case.
Make sure your window is clean and dry before sticking them on, but the suction cups work—in fact, it’s hard to get them off again. This machine-washable polyester curtain has a medium thickness that blocks sunlight and UV rays, with adjustable velcro edges to help customize the dimensions of the curtain for various window sizes. It was super difficult to remove the suction cups when done, and two of them popped off, but I think with more practice and a gentler hand that hopefully won’t keep being a problem. Overall, this curtain is not aesthetically pleasing if you have it on a smaller window as I did, but if I were traveling (especially with kids), this would be a lifesaver because of its portability and general room-darkening effect.
These 50- by 84-inch curtains have a woven, linen-style texture, are thick, and feel durable. They have a two-way hang design with a rod pocket or can be used with clip rings (they come with 20 optional metal rings). Although I hung them directly on the rod for greater blackout coverage on the window, the curtains have a pinch-pleat design that helps them appear fuller and a bit more elegant when they’re on the rings. The panels have an insulated lining that helps with temperature management (both to block summer heat and insulate against outside winter chill) and noise reduction.
The thick drapes look and feel much more expensive than they are and can be machine washable in cold water. Although a little light came through between the top crack of the curtain and the window, they did an excellent job at keeping the bright early morning light out and my hand was barely perceptible in front of me when the room was dark. These curtains are the best quality for that price point that I’ve tested, and I will continue to use them.
Machine washable?
Yes; cold
Material
Polyester
Hanging options
Clip rings; rod pocket
Dimensions
50" x 45," 63," 72," 84," 90," 92," 95," 96," 102," 105," 108," 120," 40" x 45"
This Cameron thermal insulated curtain panel comes in multiple colors, has a white thermal backside liner, and is super thin. It comes in a pack of only one polyester blackout curtain panel (if you want a set, you’ll have to buy two) that’s 50 inches wide and 95, 63, 108, or 84 inches long (I tested the latter). Instead of having multiple options for hanging, this curtain has only 1.5-inch grommet holes for the curtain rod, and it's machine washable. This curtain is considered thermal because of the white liner that faces the window to help provide a second barrier, which also helps in reducing noise. I wish it had a rod pocket or other options besides the metal grommet holes to further customize the curtain style, but the panel is machine- and iron-safe.
I was worried that, because it was so thin, it wouldn’t be effective, but it exceeded my expectations. It didn’t seem as noise-reducing as our top two picks, but it was incredibly powerful in darkening the room. I tested during a mild week so I didn’t feel its temperature-regulating thermal effects, but because of its thinness I’d be curious to see just how effective it is in colder or warmer temps. When tested during a bright morning, the only light that was let in was through the small crack between the window and wall, and at night, I could barely see my hand in front of me. This curtain comes in tons of colors, and I’d recommend it to anyone who likes a thinner curtain that still provides the blackout effect.
I bought a pair of Deconovo's blackout curtains for cheap a few years ago and paired them with these affordable tension curtain rods. It was a simple yet effective way to elevate my window setup without spending a lot, and the navy color did a fair job of blocking out light. The company has expanded its scope and now offers custom curtains—just input the width and length you want—and you can also choose from various materials and shade types. I've since tested the Cashmere and Wool Linen models, and they've done a solid job of blocking out sunlight.
If you choose a lighter color, you'll still see the outline of the window coming through, but this is less common with darker colors. Just know that when it says "cashmere" or "linen" that's not really what you're getting. The linen curtain, for example, is 20 percent linen, 25 percent silk, 50 percent polyester, and 5 percent wool. The Cashmere is a blend of polyester and chenille yarn. Still, these blended materials do a nice job of emulating luxury while keeping the price low.
I went with the grommet top for my curtain rod, but you can choose the type of header to suit your window situation. These are also not total-blackout curtains, though Deconovo sells those too if you need pitch-black darkness; I just haven't tested those. —Julian Chokkattu
Amazon Basics Room-Darkening Blackout Window Curtains for $31: These are made of a triple-weave polyester that helps to insulate and block light and have a thick coating underside that further aids in blocking outside light. However, I wish they had multiple hanging options like most on this list. Also, when I unpacked them, they were incredibly smelly, with a strong chemical odor that lasted for a few hours. At night when the curtains were drawn, I couldn't see my outstretched hand. Although they don't have any frills, they're cheap, thicker than some of the other affordable options on this list, and help immensely to keep morning light out.
Ikea Rosenmandel Blackout Curtains for $25: The polyester fabric of these curtains has a wool-like effect, and they have a backing of polyurethane for the window-facing side. I used the rod pocket to keep it more flush to the wall, and it did a good job of blocking out the harsh morning sun. For my room, the curtains were a bit long and billowed out on the sides at the bottom, creating a small gap that let light in. The curtain was also super thin, which worried me, but it generally blocked the majority of sunlight. While I don’t have many complaints, it isn't double-layered with a separate darkening panel. It's an inexpensive alternative that does what it set out to do—make the room a whole lot darker.
Photograph: Molly Higgins
Not Effective
Save your money
Ebern Designs Bantam Solid Blackout Thermal Rod Pocket Curtain Panels for $20: I tested these panels in the “biscuit” color, which is a light tan. Because of their light color, they naturally let in more light than a darker color would. (For this reason, Wayfair calls the lighter colors “room darkening” rather than true “blackout” curtains.) The material is thin and doesn’t have a coating, backing, or double paneling like other blackout curtains on this list. It's a solid room-darkening curtain, but the harsh morning sun fought against the thin material, casting a tannish yellow on my walls daily. Because of its inefficiency, I wouldn’t consider this a true blackout curtain and wouldn’t recommend it if total darkness is what you’re looking for.
Molly Higgins is a product reviewer and contributing producer at WIRED. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from UCLA and an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from the University of Missouri–Kansas City.
The bottom of the ocean is cold, dark, and under extreme pressure. It is not a place suited to the physiology of us surface dwellers: At the deepest point, the pressure of 36,200 feet of seawater is greater than the weight of an elephant on every square inch of your body. Yet Earth’s deepest places are home to life uniquely suited to these challenging conditions. Scientists have studied how the bodies of some large animals, such as anglerfish and blobfish, have adapted to withstand the pressure. But far less is known about how cells and molecules stand up to the squeezing, crushing weight of thousands of feet of seawater.
“The animals that live down in the deep sea are not ones that live in surface waters,” said Itay Budin, who studies the biochemistry of cell membranes at the University of California, San Diego. “They’re clearly biologically specialized. But we know very little, at the molecular level, about what is actually determining that specialization.”
In a recent study published in Science, researchers took the deepest look yet at how cells have adapted to life in the abyss. In 2018, Budin met Steve Haddock, a deep-sea biologist, and they combined forces to investigate whether cell membranes—specifically, the lipid molecules that membranes are made of—could help explain how animals have come to thrive in such a high-pressure environment.
To find out, they turned to comb jellies, the simple, diaphanous animals that Haddock studies at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI). Led by his student Jacob Winnikoff, the interdisciplinary team discovered that the membranes of comb jellies that reside in the depths are made of lipid molecules with completely different shapes than those of their shallow-water counterparts. Three-quarters of the lipids in the deep-sea comb jellies were plasmalogens, a type of curved lipid that is rarer in surface animals. In the pressure of the deep sea, the curvy molecule conforms to the exact shape needed to support a sturdy yet dynamic cell membrane.
“It’s an amazing paper … with quite profound implications,” said Douglas Bartlett, who studies how microbes sustain life at depth and pressure at the University of California, San Diego and was not involved in the new study. “They provide another explanation for how the lipids of deep-sea animals, and likely deep-sea microbes and a range of organisms, are adapted in a way that’s pressure-specific.”
To study the cell membranes of deep-sea animals, the biochemist Itay Budin (center) joined forces with marine biologists Steve Haddock (right) and Jacob Winnikoff (left).
Photographs: From left: Tamrynn Clegg; Geoffroy Tobe; John Lee
“They are looking into an area that, to a large degree, has not been explored,” said Sol Gruner, who researches molecular biophysics at Cornell University; he was consulted for the study but was not a co-author.
Plasmalogen lipids are also found in the human brain, and their role in deep-sea membranes could help explain aspects of cell signaling. More immediately, the research unveils a new way that life has adapted to the most extreme conditions of the deep ocean.
Insane in the Membrane
The cells of all life on Earth are encircled by fatty molecules known as lipids. If you put some lipids in a test tube and add water, they automatically line themselves up back to back: The lipids’ greasy, water-hating tails commingle to form an inner layer, and their water-loving heads arrange together to form the outer portions of a thin membrane. “It’s just like oil and water separating in a dish,” Winnikoff said. “It’s universal to lipids, and it’s what makes them work.”
For a cell, an outer lipid membrane serves as a physical barrier that, like the external wall of a house, provides structure and keeps a cell’s insides in. But the barrier can’t be too solid: It’s studded with proteins, which need some wiggle room to carry out their various cellular jobs, such as ferrying molecules across the membrane. And sometimes a cell membrane pinches off to release chemicals into the environment and then fuses back together again.
For a membrane to be healthy and functional, it must therefore be sturdy, fluid, and dynamic at the same time. “The membranes are balancing right on the edge of stability,” Winnikoff said. “Even though it has this really well-defined structure, all the individual molecules that make up the sheets on either side—they’re flowing around each other all the time. It’s actually a liquid crystal.”
One of the emergent properties of this structure, he said, is that the middle of the membrane is highly sensitive to both temperature and pressure—much more so than other biological molecules such as proteins, DNA or RNA. If you cool down a lipid membrane, for example, the molecules move more slowly, “and then eventually they’ll just lock together,” Winnikoff said, as when you put olive oil in the fridge. “Biologically, that’s generally a bad thing.” Metabolic processes halt; the membrane can even crack and leak its contents.
To avoid this, many cold-adapted animals have membranes composed of a blend of lipid molecules with slightly different structures to keep the liquid crystal flowing, even at low temperatures. Because high pressure also slows a membrane’s flow, many biologists assumed that deep-sea membranes were built the same way.
But it turns out these researchers weren’t getting the full picture. It would take an unexpected collaboration between biochemists and marine biologists, and more advanced technology, to see that deep-sea membranes had evolved a different way of going with the flow.
Going Deep
Comb jellies, or ctenophores, are voracious predators in fragile bodies. They are the largest animals that swim with cilia, which are lined up in rows known as combs, and they feed on a wide range of prey. Genetic evidence suggests that they were the first organisms to branch off the animal tree on their own evolutionary path. Though they resemble jellyfish in some ways, humans are actually more closely related to jellyfish than ctenophores are. And they have successfully colonized all kinds of ocean habitats, from surface waters to ocean trenches, and from the tropics to the poles.
The researchers collected comb jellies by robot arm when exploring the deep ocean with ROV Ventana (left) and by hand when scuba diving in surface waters (right).
Photographs: Jacob Winnikoff
You would expect such a wide-ranging group to be adaptable, and indeed comb jellies from the deep are built differently than those that live near the ocean’s surface. “You collect the deep guys, and you bring them up to the surface, and they just fall apart,” Bartlett said. “They just melt away. It’s really quite dramatic.” Similarly, if the ones adapted to shallow water end up at depth, they beat their cilia faster and faster, and eventually die. But no one really knew the molecular differences that separated them.
In 2018, Haddock, an expert on comb jellies, attended a conference on the origin of eukaryotes. After watching Budin present research on cell membranes’ response to temperature, he approached the lipid expert. Haddock had a graduate student, Winnikoff, who wanted to study adaptations to extreme pressure. It was known that lipids are sensitive to pressure, so cell membranes were a prime target for investigation. They decided to collaborate.
Haddock, Budin, and Winnikoff started by collecting comb jellies from different parts of the ocean. In scuba gear, Winnikoff carefully coaxed comb jellies from Monterey Bay’s surface waters into jars. From one of MBARI’s oceanographic vessels, he helped operate a deep-sea robot to collect comb jellies from depths of 12,000 feet. To control for the effects of the cold temperatures in the deep sea, he and Budin asked friends who were on their own expedition to gather surface comb jellies from frigid Arctic waters. In total, the team collected 66 animals from 17 related species.
Comb jellies have adapted to ocean habitats from the surface to the deep sea and from the cold poles to the warm tropics. Four of the 17 study species, clockwise from upper left: Beroe cucumis, common in shallow Arctic waters; the shallow-water Leucothea pulchra; Beroe abyssicola, a deep-water relative of B. cucumis; and an undescribed shallow-water mertensiid.
Photograph: Jacob Winnikoff
By the time the molecular part of the project was set to begin, the pandemic had hit. So Winnikoff set up an experiment in his garage. Using a fluorescence spectrometer, he sent rays of ultraviolet light into test tubes filled with small globs of membrane material from the creatures they’d collected. The results puzzled him. The deep-sea membranes didn’t become more fluid as he raised the temperature—a response considered universal among lipid membranes.
So he and Budin consulted Gruner, the former director of Cornell’s particle accelerator. If they really wanted to know what was happening in the membranes, Gruner said, they would need powerful, high-energy X-rays. And he knew the perfect source.
Under Pressure
Buried 50 feet beneath the main athletic fields at Cornell is a synchrotron: a particle accelerator that uses a high-frequency electric field and a low-frequency magnetic field to speed up charged particles. Part of the facility, which Gruner fought to establish, may as well have been designed for studying deep-sea cell membranes. Its small-angle X-ray scattering operation, which opened in 2020, can not only distinguish the finer details and shapes of molecules such as lipids, but also increase and decrease the pressure they’re under.
The team experienced some pressure, too, as they had to endure late nights to make the most of their limited time at the facility. The powerful X-rays they shot at their lipid samples revealed the clearest picture yet of cell membranes from the abyss. The deep-sea comb jellies had membrane lipids that, at our standard atmospheric pressure, have a curvier shape than those in surface cell membranes. The animals had especially increased production of the group of lipids known as plasmalogens.
“In these deep-sea comb jellies, [plasmalogens] can make up three-quarters of all the lipids, and we’re talking about all the membrane lipids in the entire body of the animal, which is kind of crazy,” Winnikoff said. “We did a lot of checks to make sure that wasn’t a mistake.”
At the surface, a plasmalogen has a small phosphate head and a pair of wide, flaring tails, resembling a badminton shuttlecock, he said. But at high pressure, the tails squeeze together to form the necessary sturdy yet dynamic structure.
“They start their lipids at a different shape,” Budin said. “So when you compress them, they still maintain the right Goldilocks shape that you see in our own cells, but at these extreme pressures.” Budin and Winnikoff named this novel modification “homeocurvature adaptation.”
Taking a plasmalogen membrane to the deep sea is like pushing down on a spring, Bartlett said. At the surface, when the spring’s tension is released, it extends dramatically. “That’s when you can imagine the cells, their membranes, falling apart.” Meanwhile, if a surface membrane with straighter lipids is brought down to the deep, it compresses too much and becomes too rigid to function properly.
Notably, curvy plasmalogens were not present in comb jellies from the cold, shallow waters of the Arctic. “The composition of the membrane almost restricts the organisms to a particular pressure range,” said Peter Meikle, a lipid biologist who works on plasmalogens at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute in Australia and was not involved in the study.
But Budin wanted to see these lipids in action, and something occurred to him during a late session at the synchrotron. “In the middle of the night when you’re deliriously tired,” he said, sometimes you have a good idea. He stumbled on a paper with an intriguing approach to studying lipids. The authors had engineered Escherichiacoli bacteria to produce plasmalogens in their membranes instead of their normal lipids. Budin realized that his team could similarly coax the bacteria to produce more plasmalogens and pressurize them to see how the membranes held up in living cells.
Following the paper’s methods, they showed that the bacteria with plasmalogen membranes could indeed better tolerate pressure than typical ones. These experimental membranes were made up of only 20 percent plasmalogens, but it was “enough to make a difference,” Winnikoff said.
Bartlett was impressed that the effect of the curved lipid shapes occurred in such unrelated species. “What is likely to come out of this is that we’ll find that this principle of homeocurvature adaptation will become a universal property of life,” he said.
Curvy Flexibility
Plasmalogens aren’t limited to the deep sea. They’re also found to varying degrees in other organisms, including humans. The percentage of plasmalogens within humans depends on the cell type. In the liver, plasmalogens make up 5 percent of phospholipids. In muscles, they can range between 20 percent and 40 percent. And in the brain, they make up about 60 percent.
In fact, the deterioration of plasmalogens has been linked to neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. “The evidence suggests that the plasmalogens are more protective,” said Meikle, who studies plasmalogens because of their links to mammalian health.
Winnikoff speculates that plasmalogens might give nerve cells the right flexibility for their communication needs. To send signals, neurons fill cellular sacs with neurotransmitters; then those sacs fuse with the cell membrane to release the signaling compounds on to the next neuron. Maybe plasmalogens’ curvy structure makes that possible, Winnikoff suggested.
Meikle likes the idea. “Certainly, they’re the primary sort of cone shape that allows membranes to form those types of curvatures,” he said. As studies better understand the role of lipids in membrane function, the findings could be relevant for a broader range of membranes.
“They’ve opened up more questions than they’ve answered,” Gruner said. “But hopefully it will catalyze people to start thinking about and doing more experiments going deeper into the subject.”
Indeed Winnikoff, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, is looking into how universal this lipid adaptation mechanism is across different organisms. He’s started experiments to figure out whether organisms found at hydrothermal vents—deep ocean areas where magma and seawater meet—have similar adaptations.
What would be really interesting, he added, would be to look at archaea, the third branch of life. Archaea lipids behave differently than those found in bacteria and eukaryotes: They follow different chemistry, Winnikoff said. “Do they follow the same physics?”
At a protest in San Francisco, blind Uber and Lyft users claim that the ride-hailing companies aren’t doing enough to prevent drivers from turning them away.
Protesters Say Uber and Lyft Are Still Failing Their Blind Passengers
At a protest in San Francisco, blind Uber and Lyft users claim that the ride-hailing companies aren’t doing enough to prevent drivers from turning them away.
Protesters are seen outside Uber headquarters in San Francisco on October 15.Photograph: Boone Ashworth
Last summer, when Krystal White was visiting Houston for a National Federation of the Blind convention, she claims she had to hide her guide dog named Gage in order to get an Uber from the airport.
This is a frequent problem, she explains.“I've had them drive right past me, and I've had neighbors go, ‘I think that was your Uber driver,’” White says. “And I'm like, ‘oh great.’ So I've missed appointments, I've missed my daughter's play at school.
“It makes you feel isolated—like it's all your fault, you're blind. And you can't get anywhere when you're trying so hard to do so.”
White, from Boise in Idaho, was among the protesters who gathered on October 15 outside the San Francisco headquarters of Uber and Lyft to demand that the companies take major steps to stop discrimination against people with disabilities on their platforms—particularly against visually impaired people who use guide dogs or white canes.
Many had personal experiences in which they say Uber or Lyft drivers rejected them as soon as they pulled up. Juanita Herrera, from Southern California, was at the protest with her 4-year-old daughter. She says when she was pregnant years ago, she got off work late and didn’t want to take public transportation, so she called an Uber.
“The driver showed up, saw my dog, and started getting aggressive. He was like, ‘no dogs.’ And I'm like, ‘but it's a service animal.’ He just kept saying ‘no dogs,’” she says. “I'm visibly pregnant at the time, right? He just kind of left me stranded. He then drove off. He wouldn’t cancel the trip until 15 minutes later.”
On another occasion in 2021, a Lyft driver refused to stop while Herrera’s young daughter was in a car seat, because of her guide dog, Jaden. The driver said she didn’t take pets. Herrera says the driver claimed no knowledge of Lyft’s policy on guide dogs and that when she still refused to take them, Herrera told the driver she would report the incident. The driver got very angry, accused Herrera of trying to get her fired, and then drove off, she says. Herrera says she filed a report and nothing came of it.
At the protest, people said that the companies need to institute a “zero-tolerance policy” for discriminatory drivers who turn away passengers with visual impairments. They also said that ride-hailing companies need to better educate their drivers on how to accommodate people with visual impairments. The protest was organized by the National Federation of the Blind and took place on White Cane Awareness Day, meant to spotlight the needs of people with visual impairments.
Uber did not respond to a request for comment. A Lyft spokesperson told WIRED that “discrimination has no place in the Lyft community.”
“We strive to provide an inclusive and accessible platform for riders, including those who rely on service animals,” the Lyft spokesperson says. “We continually update our practices to improve accessibility for riders and are proud to be working directly with advocacy organizations in the community.”
Frank Maestas, who was at the same protest, says he had a similar experience in Houston. His would-be Uber driver refused to give him a ride upon seeing his white cane. “An Uber driver told me that he cannot take me because he was afraid I'd get hurt going into his vehicle or coming out,” Maestas says. “So he refused me a ride.”
Uber and Lyft have been challenged in court and by activists for years on their alleged failure to fully cooperate with the Americans With Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability in public and commercial transportation—which could mean lack of accessible vehicles, a higher price for services, or an outright refusal of services.
Uber and Lyft are plagued by two main issues: They often have too few wheelchair-accessible vehicles, to the point where wait times for passengers are egregiously long. And in some cases, disabled passengers claim a car isn’t available at all. Uber’s wheelchair-accessible service is listed as available in some cities in the US and the UK. Neither Uber nor Lyft make the number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles public.
When WIRED journalists tried to book one with Uber in central London, they were listed as “unavailable.” (Lyft does not operate in London.) In San Francisco, there was more luck—two vehicles were available on Uber as wheelchair accessible—while Lyft does not list wheelchair-accessible vehicles available nearby, simply a message that it will be a much longer wait period.
Protesters have long claimed that drivers will decide to not pick up passengers with a visible disability, which includes people who require a wheelchair or guide dog, and do not face repercussions. Passengers say that when they report incidents like this to Uber or Lyft, they often go ignored.
A Lyft spokesman told WIRED that, “while there is a notable shortage of the types of vehicles needed on the road today, we will continue to push for solutions that make rideshare as accessible as possible for everyone.” (Lyft did not elaborate on how it plans to bridge the lack of available vehicles.)
Michelle Barlak, public relations manager for The Seeing Eye, which provides guide dogs for people with visual impairments, tells WIRED that the organization has received “frequent and increasing reports of rideshare access denials from Seeing Eye dog handlers.” A survey by the nonprofit Guide Dogs for the Blind found 83 percent of members said they had been denied rides.
Both Uber and Lyft offer in-app options for people to specify that they’re traveling with a pet, which usually involves paying slightly more. But since guide dogs aren’t pets, people with visual impairments cannot be required to use this option.
A Lyft spokesperson tells WIRED that by 2025, the company will be launching a “service animal opt-in feature,” which it says will let passengers “disclose that they travel with a service animal when requesting a ride.”
Uber, which did not respond to a request for comment, allows passengers to specify via in-app settings if they are traveling with a service animal.
“According to the ADA, rideshare drivers cannot refuse access based on the size, weight, or breed of a dog, allergies, fear of dogs, or cultural/religious objections,” Barlak tells WIRED.
At the protest, White argues that guide dogs are not at all comparable to pets, which drivers may fear are unruly or poorly behaved. However, some drivers don’t see them any differently.
“Guide dogs are $75,000 dogs—they're not gonna go to the bathroom in your car or get sick in your car,” White says.
Barlak says that Uber and Lyft need to make it easier for visually impaired passengers to report difficulties using their services and for the companies to better educate their drivers on the needs of blind passengers.
Michael Forzano, a protester who lives in New York and uses a guide dog, claims that on three occasions, drivers have slammed the door on him, driven away when his hands were still on the car, and almost ran over his guide dog’s paws. After reporting these incidents, he says, nothing has happened.
On one other occasion, an Uber driver in Orlando refused Forzano and his girlfriend service when they entered the car with his guide dog. He says the driver turned on loud music and verbally assaulted them until they ended the trip. “I waited over an hour for the police to arrive,” Forzano says. “The police sided with the driver, and I'm still working through the process of that.”
People who use wheelchairs also face challenges using Uber and Lyft. Joe Rappaport—communications and strategy director at Taxis for All, a nonprofit advocacy group focused on helping wheelchair users get access to accessible taxis and rideshare cars, and executive director at Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled—has been central to the effort to make sure Uber and Lyft have enough wheelchair accessible cars in New York City.
Rappaport says that there are many people with mobility issues who rely on Uber and Lyft, especially since they remove the burden of flagging down a car in a place like Manhattan.
Rappaport says the companies have largely had the same accessibility issues of New York City’s yellow cab industry, which has also been scrutinized for having too few wheelchair-accessible vehicles.
“You've got these companies who claim to be at the edge, introducing new technology and new ways of doing things, but in the end they're the same old bad service without a thought about accessibility,” Rappaport says.
In 2018, Uber and Lyft settled a lawsuit filed in New York in which for-hire vehicle companies were required to have a quarter of their rides be in wheelchair-accessible cars by mid-2023. Uber and Lyft claimed that the accessibility mandate was “seriously flawed” and “arbitrary.” The settlement carved out a compromise: At least 80 percent of its requests for wheelchair-accessible cars would arrive in under 10 minutes by mid-2021.
Rappaport says that this lawsuit has definitely had a positive effect on ride accessibility in New York City—but anecdotally, he says it’s still next to impossible to get accessible vehicles in places like Staten Island or the Bronx, even if it’s easier in places like Park Slope or Manhattan.
Legal efforts across the country aiming to hold the companies to account have also had mixed results. In 2020, Lyft had to settle a separate lawsuit with the Department of Justice, which charged the company with not accommodating riders with wheelchairs or walkers. Lyft made payments to affected individuals in the suit but didn’t admit to any wrongdoing. Similarly, Uber had to pay millions to settle a 2022 Department of Justice case that accused it of violating the ADA by overcharging people with disabilities.
“What's most frustrating about it is that when these platforms work, they are a real game changer for blind people,” says Chris Danielsen, director of public relations at the National Federation of the Blind. “The reason we know this is an issue is because we use these platforms all the time. They really are a game changer for us.”
Since the October 15 rally, Herrera says that she has been denied service again. “It happens all the time,” she says. “Uber and Lyft have to take a more drastic approach. How are you letting people get away with breaking the law? That’s what I don’t understand.”
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.
These Retro Gaming Consoles Deliver a Dose of Nostalgia
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.
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Do you remember the alluring 8-bit music, flashing screens, and excitement of the arcades? Maybe you spent many happy hours in front of an early home computer or game console. Or perhaps you just want a taste of what early video games were like. Everyone loves new retro-looking games, but if you really want to scratch that nostalgic itch, you need to revisit the classics.
There are many ways to play retro games, but perhaps the easiest is to snag a retro gaming console. I grew up in the arcade and owned a string of computers and consoles over the years, so when updated versions of these systems were released, I jumped at the chance to test them. These are the best retro gaming consoles worth your time.
Updated October 2024: We added the Atari 2600+ and the Arcade1Up Pac-Man Deluxe Arcade Cabinet, mention of the latest Evercade R models, removed a discontinued device, and updated prices.
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Photograph: Simon Hill
Best Overall
Evercade VS
With an authentic, minimalist 1980s aesthetic, this retro-gaming console offers an eclectic mix of classic games from different systems and publishers, including titles like Missile Command, Double Dragon, and Speedball 2. Games come in collections on $20 physical cartridges. There are more than 260 officially licensed games from Atari, Technos, Data East, Codemasters, and Piko Interactive, but new releases are rolling out all the time. Pop the flap and you’ll find space for two cartridges inside. Press the power button and a light strip blinks to life and turns red, followed by synth-wave music and high-resolution box art that gives you the retro feels.
The rectangular controllers remind me of NES controllers with shoulder buttons, but they are probably the weakest element here—too lightweight and not comfortable for long play sessions. Luckily, you can use most third-party controllers (wired or wireless), and the console supports up to four players. Games run smoothly and mostly look good on the big screen. You also get display options, including the original ratio and artificial scan lines, control schemes with support for remapping, and the ability to save anywhere. All of that at an affordable price makes this the best retro console for most people.
The latest and cheapest version ( the VS-R) has a different color scheme, and comes with one controller, and the first three Tomb Raider games.
Whether you’re an avid collector or you happen to have a stack of old cartridges and discs, the Polymega may pique your interest. Designed as the one retro console to rule them all, this modular system has optional add-ons for NES, SNES, Genesis (Megadrive), TurboGrafx, or N64 that can accommodate the original cartridges and controllers from those respective systems. The large black base unit also plays Sega Saturn, PlayStation, Sega CD, TurboGrafx-CD, and Neo Geo CDs. The controller most resembles a DualShock pad, but the modules each come with an authentic-feeling version of the original gamepad—including a light gun.
Build quality is excellent, and the software emulation is impressive, with saves and screen-filtering options. I tested the Super module after dusting off my old Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country cartridges, and it has been a blast introducing my kids to these classics. When you first insert a cartridge or disc, you get the option to run it or install it to the internal storage (it has 32 GB out of the box, but you can expand this with an SD card or SSD), which is great for enthusiasts who want to preserve their collections. Real estate under the TV is at a premium, so replacing multiple systems with a single box is appealing. It comes with a handful of obscure titles preinstalled, but it only makes sense for gamers with large physical game libraries. Just know that orders can take a while to ship. If Playmaji can work out a way to offer its library of classic titles to buy and download, this could be the ultimate retro console, but it's not cheap.
The original Evercade (8/10, WIRED Recommends) was a handheld console that debuted in 2020, offering the ability to play titles that were available on old systems like the NES, SNES, the Sega Genesis (Mega Drive), Atari Lynx, and the Mattel Intellivision. The improved version, the Evercade EXP (7/10, WIRED Review) supports the same games and still has a 4.3-inch screen, but it's a much sharper IPS panel. There's also USB-C charging and TATE mode for vertical shooters, which makes for a solid upgrade. It's not without its faults. Build quality is questionable and the button layout can be awkward, especially for TATE mode.
You can still plug it into your TV with a Mini-HDMI to HDMI cable. The Evercade runs games smoothly, offers a save function, and has decent battery life. Games are organized into collections on $20 cartridges with booklets that give a short history of each title. All of Evercade’s cartridges work on both the VS (see above) and the original Evercade, too, with the exception of a couple of Namco collections that were only licensed for the handheld. If you want multiplayer and prefer to play on the big screen, the Evercade VS is still a better choice.
The latest and cheapest version (the EXP-R) has a different color scheme, and comes with the first three Tomb Raider games.
The first home console for many was the iconic wood-paneled Atari 2600 or VCS (Video Computer System). My grandad had one, and Pong (several versions of which were in Video Olympics) is the first game I can remember playing in a living room. The Atari 2600+ nails the look, though it is around 25 percent smaller, and boasts working mechanical switches, the classic one-button joystick, and a game cartridge to slot in. Instead of a single game, this cart holds 10 Atari classics (Adventure, Combat, Dodge 'Em, Haunted House, Maze Craze, Missile Command, RealSportsVolleyball, Surround, Video Pinball, and Yars' Revenge). You can also dust off your original cartridges and play them (some won’t work because this is an emulator, but most will), though they take a few seconds to load.
Honestly, the games from this era have aged terribly. They do not look good on big modern TVs, the art and sound are basic, and the gameplay is often obtuse. My kids got frustrated quickly, and I wasn’t far behind them. Most folks should skip this as it will almost certainly end up gathering dust in the loft, but collectors and Atari fans in pursuit of that warm nostalgia glow will likely not be disappointed, and it’s an easy way to play those old games on your current TV.
This elegant, modern handheld can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges, so it's perfect for folks who held onto childhood game cartridges like Super Mario World or Pokémon Crystal. The Analogue Pocket (8/10, WIRED Recommends) boasts a gorgeous 3.5-inch high-res display with 10 times the pixels of the original square Game Boy. The D-pad and four face buttons are satisfying to use. Battery life extends beyond 7 hours and there's a USB-C port for recharging. There's also a microSD card slot for saves.
With two FPGA chips inside, the Analogue Pocket can be trained to mimic many kinds of classic gaming hardware as soon as you fire up a cartridge. Since one of the chips is user-hackable, you may also be able to play games from other systems. On the downside, the volume and power buttons are tiny, the layout doesn't work so well for Game Boy Advance games, and you can expect a long wait if you order one.
When it comes to official mini consoles, the Sega Genesis Mini (also known as the Mega Drive) is the pinnacle. Less than half the size of the original but with the same design, it looks the part. There’s even a fake volume slider and flaps that open, though sadly it can’t accommodate cartridges. It plugs into your TV with the included HDMI cable. The two corded three-button controllers feel authentic, but you can buy a wireless six-button controller that’s even better.
The experience is elevated by a strong lineup of titles that run smoothly and look exactly as you remember. Alongside several Sonic the Hedgehog games, there’s Ecco the Dolphin, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Golden Axe, Tetris, Street Fighter 2, and many more—42 in total—with less filler than on most other mini consoles (though, annoyingly, there’s no Mortal Kombat). Everything is tied together neatly with specially composed menu music from the talented Yuzo Koshiro. Of all the consoles I tested, this was the most evocative. There's also a Sega Genesis Mini 2 ($97) based on the smaller version of Sega's original 16-bit console, with a fresh roster of 60 games (including Earthworm Jim 2, Phantasy Star 2, and The Revenge of Shinobi), a six-button controller, and enhancements for some titles.
Few will remember SNK’s Neo Geo console from 1990, such was the dominance of Nintendo and Sega at the time, but it matched the performance of the company’s multi-video-system (MVS) arcade cabinets. The newer Neo Geo Mini unusually emulates an arcade cabinet rather than a console. It has a tiny 3.4-inch screen and a joystick with four buttons. It’s a little awkward to play on, so you may prefer to buy a Neo Geo Mini Pad controller. You get a power cable in the box, but you’ll need an AC adapter, and you should buy an HDMI to Mini-HDMI cable to play on your TV.
With 40 games presented in true arcade style, including a prompt to spend credits when you die, the emulation is excellent. Plus, SNK added the option to save and return to any point. It’s a fighting-heavy lineup of games, including series like Metal Slug, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury, and Samurai Showdown. There are some fun games you’ll struggle to find elsewhere, and the arcade cabinet design makes it a great desk ornament.
The dinky PlayStation Classic looks cute, but Sony’s retro gaming console is a bit of a letdown. It comes with two wired controllers, a power cable, and an HDMI cable, but there’s no official wireless controller option, and you have to supply your own AC adapter. With just 20 games on board, this is a limited PlayStation lineup. Thankfully, there are some real classics, including Grand Theft Auto, Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil Director’s Cut, Tekken 3, and Twisted Metal. You can plug in a USB flash drive and potentially add more games with a bit of fiddling (there are guides online).
The experience is marred by poor emulation and inconsistent performance. The menu is distinctly barebones. Some of the early 3D games don’t look great on modern TVs, and there has been no attempt to upscale or remaster them. At least there’s a virtual memory card built in for saves. Despite some of the disappointments here, the Classic does boast a great list of games that chart its evolution and remind us why it was so impactful.
The Commodore 64 made its way into millions of homes in the early ’80s when home computers began to take off. The C64 Mini is a miniaturized version of the beige plastic original, but its keys are just for show. It comes with a joystick and plugs into your TV with the included HDMI cable. There’s no AC adapter, but any phone charger you have lying around will do. There are a couple of USB ports, so you can add a keyboard or a second joystick, or even plug in a flash drive.
With 64 games installed, from Impossible Mission to Boulder Dash, there’s plenty to choose from, but not all are classics. There’s also no booklet or instructions, which makes some of the titles almost unplayable. It does run the Commodore 64 BASIC programming language, so you can load custom ROMs to add more games if you don’t mind jumping through a few hoops. The whole thing is a little clunky, the 8-bit graphics look horrific on a 65-inch TV, and the joystick brought me no joy at all, but none of that is inconsistent with the original.
Released in 1987, the Commodore Amiga 500 wasn’t big in the US, but it was one of the most popular home computers in the UK and across Europe, and it sparked a fierce rivalry with the Atari ST. Both offered a leap in gaming quality and a raft of new titles, like Alien Breed, Speedball 2, and Worms (all available on the A500 Mini alongside another 22 classics). The A500 Mini looks the part, though the keyboard isn’t usable, and it relies on emulation. You get a delightfully chunky replica mouse and gamepad (you can buy a joystick separately), and there is a USB port, so you can run more games from a flash drive (using the WHDLoad system). The A500 Mini also supports the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) of the A1200.
Within an hour of plugging it in, I was deep into a season with Brutal Deluxe and had the rapidly blistering thumb and aching hands to show for it. The D-Pad on the gamepad is a problem, especially when you want diagonal movement, but I was able to plug in the joystick from the C64 Mini and use that instead. The included games are glitch-free, and exactly as I remember them. The A500 Mini plugs into your TV via HDMI and can run at 50 or 60 Hz at 720p resolution. While some older games look poor on a modern 65-inch screen, these titles all hold up well. You get four save slots per game, and loading is instantaneous, so you can jump back in where you left off. It is a little pricey for what you get, but if you are willing to track down and sideload your faves, the A500 Mini is a great way to relive the Amiga glory days.
Much of the joy of retro gaming is in re-creating those special moments from childhood, and the arcade is where my love of gaming began. I’ve had my eye on Arcade1Up’s cabinets for a while, as they seem like the next best thing to finding an authentic old cabinet. Few games are as iconic or universally appealing as Pac-Man, and this cabinet packs in all the best Pac-Man titles (Pac-Man, Pac-Land, Pac-Man Plus, Super Pac-Man, Pac & Pal, and Pac-Mania), with room for extra arcade classics like Galaxian, Galaga, Dig Dug, and Rolling Thunder.
I enjoyed putting this together. It’s a replica, so the coin slots are fakes, but the marquee lights up, it has a 17-inch color LCD screen, and you get authentic-feeling arcade controls. The big surprise was how much my teenage kids loved the Pac-Man arcade machine, and we spent hours gaming on this. It is pricey and limited by modern console standards, but it has that old-school feel that you can never get from emulators and gamepads, and you can always delve into modding if you want to get more from it (though this isn’t the best cabinet for that). I also love seeing it sitting in the corner of my office, and a quick game is a great way to take a short break from my work. Arcade1Up offers a bunch of other themed arcade cabinets from Star Wars to Street Fighter.
The Picade (7/10, WIRED Recommends) is a mini arcade cabinet kit that comes in two sizes, with an 8-inch or 10-inch screen, boxes full of components, and instructions for assembly. It’s a fun project that only takes a few hours to put together, and when you add a Raspberry Pi, a USB-C power supply, and a microSD card with the RetroPie operating system, you have an arcade cabinet that can play ROMs for just about any retro system you can think of. But you do need to supply your own game ROMs. (Playing licensed games you have not purchased is illegal.)
We had a blast playing Ms. Pac-Man, Super Bomberman, and Galaga on this desktop cabinet. The authentic arcade controls are durable and comfortable for intense sessions. Because it has a Raspberry Pi inside, there’s a lot of scope for customization on the software side, and you can also create your own cabinet art or switch hardware components to get the look and feel you want. The Picade is one possibility, but you can always use a Raspberry Pi to build your own retro gaming console and plug into your TV. It’s a solid option to get several systems in one.
It’s a shame that two of the best retro gaming consoles in recent years, the NES Classic Mini and the SNES Classic Mini, have been discontinued. Both feature great designs with a miniaturized look that’s true to the originals, silky performance, and strong game lineups of Nintendo’s greatest hits. You can still buy them online (usually from third-party resellers), but prices are seriously inflated. The SNES Classic Mini, for example, was $80 at launch, but a reseller has it for more than $300 on Amazon right now. You might have better luck buying one used.
Nintendo fans keen on some classic gaming action might be better served by snagging a Switch and buying a Nintendo Switch Online membership ($20 for a year) to access more than 100 NES and SNES titles (here’s the full list). Add the Expansion Pack ($50 for a year) and you can get these N64 games too. If you’re craving some old-school pocket-sized Nintendo fun, check out the revived Game & Watch ($55) line. They are limited to a couple of games each, but when those games are Super Mario or Zelda titles, that can be enough for hours of fun.
The Analogue Mega SG ($200) (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is expensive, and it doesn’t come with any games or controllers (they cost $25 apiece). But it can play old Sega Genesis cartridges, so it’s a solid choice if you have a box of them in the basement. Thanks to an FPGA chip, this console runs the original games just as you remember them.
If you have Valve’s Steam Deck, check out the comprehensive EmuDeck to emulate a wide variety of old systems in style.
PC gamers also have an enormous choice of emulators. I like RetroArch because it emulates multiple systems, but if you have a favorite old console and want to get close to that original experience, you can likely find a tailor-made emulator to scratch that itch.
The Panic Playdate ($199) (7/10, WIRED Recommends) isn’t strictly a retro console, but it is fun, creative, and quirky, and it has a distinct retro feel. It even has a crank for an all-new way to interact with games!
The Analogue Duo ($250) (6/10, WIRED Review) makes TurboGrafx-16 and PC Engine games look incredible on any HDMI screen. It boasts HuCARD and CD-ROM functionality, so existing games work regardless of media, region, or other requirements. Sadly, it’s pricey, controllers cost extra, and there’s no openFPGA support.
Photograph: Simon Hill
What You Need to Know
Retro Gaming Q&A
Got questions about retro gaming? We have answers.
What are retro gaming consoles?
Retro gaming consoles are older game systems or new systems designed to play old games. Some retro gaming consoles are based on a specific original, others run games from various older consoles and home computers. Retro gaming consoles come in all shapes and sizes, but most are under-the-TV consoles or handhelds.
What game consoles are considered retro?
The rules about what can be considered retro are not carved in stone, but the term is usually applied to stuff that is at least 15 years old. With that in mind, everything from early arcade cabinets to the original Atari and Nintendo consoles to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox can be considered retro.
What were the best-selling consoles of all time?
Sony’s PlayStation 2 is the best-selling console of all time, with almost 160 million sold. The Nintendo DS is second at around 155 million, the Nintendo Switch has sold around 140 million so far, the GameBoy and GameBoy Color reached around 119 million sales, and Sony sold 117 million PlayStation 4 consoles.
Can I use my old retro game cartridges?
It depends on the console, but retro gaming systems like the Polymega and some of Analogue’s consoles can play the original cartridges and discs that ran on old systems. It might be time to dig that box of old cartridges out of your loft or basement.
Are retro games a good investment?
The short answer is no. Most games fall in value. Some rare older titles might be worth big bucks, but you must do your research. Because retro game collecting is quite popular, prices have risen for many older systems. If you were planning to turn a profit, there’s a sweet spot at the end of a system’s life where games and hardware can be picked up cheap, but it will be several years before these things are considered collectible and prices begin to rise again.
Are emulators legal?
Emulation software is legal, but playing licensed games you have not purchased is illegal.
What are ROMs?
ROM stands for Read Only Memory. ROMs in the context of retro gaming are digital copies of video games.
Are ROMs legal?
If you own a physical game and rip the contents to make your own backup copy, that’s within your rights, but it is illegal to distribute ROMs. Downloading ROMs from the internet is piracy and subject to copyright infringement. Downloading a ROM for a game you physically own is considered a gray area by many, but it is strictly speaking still illegal.
Simon Hill has been testing and writing about tech for more than 15 years. He is a senior writer for WIRED. You can find his previous work at Business Insider, Reviewed, TechRadar, Android Authority, USA Today, Digital Trends, and many other places. He loves all things tech, but especially smartphones,... Read more
It’s getting cold outside, and it's even worse for a person who’s always cold. The first crisp morning of the season sends your poor, perpetually cold loved one diving under the bedsheets, digging for the fuzzy socks, or fiddling with the thermostat when your back is turned. (Don’t look—they’re probably doing it right now.) This year, give the gift of warmth to your friend who is constantly shivering, sniffing, and suffering. From protective layers for outdoor adventures to cozy accessories, here’s how to show your hypothermic human you care.
Updated October 2024: We replaced older picks with newer warm ones, like slippers, flannel sheets, and a backyard hot tub. We also updated links and pricing.
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Photograph: Yeti
Tiny Hot Cups for Sharing
Yeti 6-oz Stackable Cups
These tiny stackable mugs from Yeti are so unbearably cute that I have a hard time looking at them. Like most of Yeti's drinkware, they're dishwasher-friendly and come in a wide variety of colors. The ceramic lining means that your wee splash of Fireball whisky won't taste metallic when you sip.
These are perfect for stashing in a bag or jacket pocket when you just need to stop in a coffee shop and slide it under an espresso machine for a quick hot cortado. Through cold and rainy Oregon winters, I use them to make matching cups of piping hot cocoa to lure my 6- and 8-year-old out of bed every morning. (If you really want to impress the littles, get a milk frother so that milk is extra velvety.) They don't come with a lid, but the smallest Yeti Magslider lid fits ($10 at Amazon or Yeti). These would also make great camping mugs for a niece and nephew.
The Company Store Legends Hotel Velvet Flannel Sheet Set
Do you share a bed with your favorite perpetually cold person? Consider upgrading to cozy flannel sheets. Crisp cotton is nice in the summer, but for the winter months, your loved one wants to snuggle down into fluffed-out fibers. Bonus points if you put a hot water bottle at the foot of the bed so they don't spend many shivery minutes waiting for their toes to heat up.
In the winter, there are days when the cold reaches down into my bones, and the only thing that helps is loads of hot water, either internally (in the form of tea) or externally (in a hot tub). For now, I visit the communal hot tubs, but I really want this for the backyard. My spouse will never put up with the amount of maintenance that a home hot tub requires, nor the inflated power and water bills. But maybe he will read this guide and reconsider. (Hi, honey!)
Speaking of hot water, this is the best way I've found to take some of it on the go with me. The Mountain Tumbler is an insulated, double-walled mug that has a tea basket that fits inside. You can put a few spoonfuls of any tea of your choice into the brewer basket and pour hot water over it. You can either screw the top on and let it steep or toss after a few minutes. I love this thing. I make tea, leave it in my car while I hike the river or stand around a playground for a few hours, then sit in the car to warm up with piping hot tea three hours later. It has a specialized sipping lid, but I've sometimes had to take the lid off entirely to let my tea cool down, because it's too hot. If you give this as a gift, I suggest including some tea to go along with it. It's not one of the company's bolder blends, but I like the chamomile from the Tea Spot.
Don't want to wait for tea to brew? Instead of steeping, you can simply plop Tea Drops in a mug of hot water, where they dissolve into a lightly sweetened, aromatic pool of bliss. The “drops” are clusters of organic tea leaves, packed tightly into adorable shapes and wrapped in recyclable packets. This sampler set comes in a ribbon-ready box—a perfect gift if you’re gunning for a shout-out on your frigid friend’s Instagram. Plus, it's one of our favorite gifts from BIPOC-owned businesses.
If your perpetually cold friend doesn’t already have one, get them a space heater. I own this slightly older model, and while I wouldn’t say the heat fills up my entire 10 x 12-foot bedroom, it does a solid job of keeping my desk area comfortable for the whole work day. My favorite feature is the auto-off timer, which makes it so that I can feel safe falling asleep, knowing it’ll shut off within an hour. In the morning, I can wake up, grab the remote from my nightstand, and lollygag in bed while the room heats up.
Bonus points if your perpetually cold giftee lives with someone who is not perpetually cold: This space heater can prevent acts of violence from being committed over the thermostat. Trust us.
Puffer Hug has a few different insulated, nylon scarves with pockets. The Original Puffer Hug ($50) is a real nylon scarf with a pocket on the end. The new Scarf 418 is more of a—I don't know how else to say this—it's a puffy, cozy nylon dickie with two pockets and buttons that let you seal it around your chest.
It's perfect for your ever-chilly loved one to wear under a wool coat or a raincoat, if they don't want to do the full-on Michelin Man layering routine. However, these pockets are so handy that I will often just wear my insulated dickie buttoned up around my house. I look a little silly, but I often look silly anyway.
Objectively, the hoodie is the perfect Cold Person garment. It's both an outer and an inner layer, and you can just pull the hood over your head if you forgot your hat. You never have to take it off!
While everyone at WIRED has different favorite hoodies for their activities and body types, the one that I'm wearing the most right now is Fjallraven's Vardag hoodie. It's 100 percent densely woven organic cotton and has no PFAS, which I look for in garments that I'm wearing all day. I wore this for a full weekend at a river cabin, by which I mean sitting by a fire all day and all night. The cut is perfect—loose enough to wear a layer underneath but slim enough to wear under a puffer. For a little more warmth, put a merino wool base layer underneath.
Every perpetually cold person has dozens of gloves, but they always need more gloves, because you're always losing and finding gloves again. Over the years, I have tried so many pairs of gloves for hiking, biking, and snowboarding. But for everyday wear, I keep coming back to the North Face Etips. The sizing is perfect. They're touchscreen-compatible, and the fabric is thin and stretchy enough that I can still use my hands to unzip things or manipulate my keys. For rainy weather, I also like Showers Pass knit gloves ($47), which have a membrane to keep your hands dry.
If your loved one is perpetually cold, then odds are they have many, many sweaters, hats, and vests, but not very many insulated pants. For some reason, so many of us walk around in multiple layers on our core, and none on our shivery, goose-pimpled legs. I have a few options that your loved one might like. Wild Rye's Payette Pants are made from recycled polyester and insulated with Primaloft. The soft, relaxed fit feels very fashion-forward, especially when worn with the cropped, matching Payette pullover top. Wild Rye caters to women mountain bikers who have a wide range of body types. The waist is elasticized, and while the legs are very long, they also have drawstring cuffs so you can shorten them or tuck them into boots.
If you're not ready to start wearing a full-on set of puffy pajamas everywhere you go (I am), Snow Peak makes quilted pants that are more tailored and look a little more like regular pants, and I also like Eddie Bauer's fleece-lined jeans. Or they could cut out the footbox on a sleeping bag and just walk around like that. Any port in a storm, as they say.
Your personal perpetually cold person probably has toes that are always colder than Edward Cullen's icy, sparkly skin. We have many favorite slipper picks in our Best Slippers guide, but these are the ones that I'm wearing right now. At 7.4 ounces, they're incredibly light—they weigh about the same as a pair of running shoes—and they're made with a proprietary last that creates a lot of arch support and hugs your heels.
These slippers aren't loose. That won't be to everyone's liking, especially if you like shuffling around in big, fuzzy socks. But I really hate sliding around in soft, oversized slippers, and I like how stable these are. The only thing worse than being cold is falling off a stairstep in a pair of too-big house shoes. The snug fit actually makes my feet feel warmer. The upper is insulated, and it has a fleece-type lining so you can wear it without socks (but also, I'm usually wearing them with socks).
“This price? For a blanket?!” Hear me out. Yes, it's expensive, but the Rumpl blanket is exceedingly warm and durable for its lightness. I have an obsessive relationship with this blanket. I have one on my couch, one in my cargo bike, and one in my car, where I’ve been able to whip it out for chilly mountain camping and spontaneous winter beach bonfires. So far, it’s held up to several years of sand, dirt, and a chaotic dog that tries to dig a hole in every surface she encounters. It is a veritable shield against cold, so your frigid friend’s outdoor fun doesn’t have to end when the temperature dips.
Skida is a Vermont-based brand that makes colorful outdoor accessories that have a cult following among outdoorsy women. Do you have women in your life? Are they around you right now? One of them might be wearing a cute, printed beanie even as we speak. These headbands are designed to keep sweat from getting in your eyes while protecting you from the headwinds. You can choose between the lightweight Nordic headband or the microfleece-lined Alpine for extra coziness. As a plus, their headlines are made in Vermont, and the microfleece is made of 87 percent recycled materials. Just one question remains: Which of the (many) colors and patterns will you pick?
Look, there are times when only the biggest, puffiest jacket will do. I look forward to when the temperatures drops in the fall and I can shoulder myself into this jacket again, like a female Kenny from South Park. This is the warmest parka that Patagonia makes. It's made from 100 percent recycled Gore-Tex with a waterproof Gore-Tex membrane that is, again, free from perfluorinated chemicals or carcinogens that linger in the soil and groundwater. The face fabric is also 100 percent recycled and partially made with yarn spun from ocean plastic.
I wear this jacket while cycling and hiking. It inflates me to about four times my actual size and I love every inch of it. It has kept me dry through a cold rain when temperatures hovered around freezing. I particularly love the insulated, adjustable hood and the huge pockets, located right on your torso when you need to huddle and keep your hands warm. Unfortunately, it only comes in men's sizes and it costs as much as an iPhone.
Adrienne So is a senior associate reviews editor for WIRED, where she reviews consumer technology. She graduated from the University of Virginia with bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish, and she previously worked as a freelance writer for Cool Hunting, Paste, Slate, and other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Senior Associate Reviews Editor
Pia Ceres is focused on making WIRED.com run seamlessly, whether she's crafting headlines or adapting print stories for web. She's sometimes a writer and always a dog person.
Analogue3D’s Retro Console Proves the N64 Controller Was the Worst Ever
Some things are better left in the past.
Photography Courtesy of Nintendo
I'm here to make friends, bask in the kind, accepting glow of internet comments, and speak the dark truth you've all long known to be true: The N64 controller, Nintendo's infamous trident joypad for its third home console, is, and always was, awful.
You may think you like it. If you're of a “certain age,” there's a fair chance you have fond memories of being huddled around a TV screen, screeching with fury as you got hit by a blue shell in Mario Kart 64; losing yourself in the frenetic chaos of multiplayer Super Smash Bros.; or exploring Hyrule with wide-eyed wonder in Ocarina of Time.
Nostalgia is a powerful force, though—and those warm fuzzy memories of what is undeniably one of gaming's golden eras blinds you to the fact that you were doing all that with an abomination of a controller wedged into your hands.
Hate's a strong term to level at a video game controller, but I hate the N64 controller with a passion that must be unhealthy to direct at a bundle of plastic and wires. And, being of that certain age, it's a hatred I've carried since childhood. Yet, as time passed, the hatred had subsided, or at least moved to the background. This week, however, my rage has been brought back to the fore.
Analog Days
The reason for this renewed odium? The reveal of the Analogue3D, an upcoming third-party console that not only plays original Nintendo 64 game cartridges, but makes them palatable on a modern 4K TV screen. Unlike the string of “mini” consoles released over the last few years, such as the SNES Classic Mini or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, Analogue's gear doesn't rely on emulation of games, but rather runs those original cartridges and uses an FPGA chip to—essentially—emulate the hardware of the original console.
It's not Analogue's first attempt at reviving classic hardware, having previously launched the likes of the Analogue Pocket, a Game Boy–shaped handheld that plays original Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance carts. It can also be kitted out with adaptors to handle Game Gear, Neo Geo Pocket Color, TurboGrafx-16, and Atari Lynx carts, too, making for a retro game collector's dream system.
The Analogue3D looks to be a promising bit of tech too. Analogue says it's built around “a 220k LE Altera Cyclone 10GX, the most powerful FPGA Analogue has ever used in a product,” offers region-free support for N64 cartridges from anywhere in the world in NTSC or PAL format, an inbuilt version of the Nintendo Expansion Pak (an N64 accessory that doubled the console's available memory from 4 MB to a whopping 8 MB, improving performance on select games), and outputs in 4K, or original display modes maintaining “true CRT reference quality” with “immersive scanlines and shadow masks.”
Analogue3D plays original Nintendo 64 cartridges and makes them palatable on a modern 4K TV screen.
It's also set to have its own dedicated OS, 3DOS, an upgraded version of Analogue's earlier AnalogueOS rebuilt for 4K screens, allowing users to manage everything from screenshots to Wi-Fi connections.
Know what it doesn't have, though? That wretched original controller.
Sure, like Nintendo's original 1996 console, the Analogue3D does feature four physical controller ports to connect N64 joypads, and Analogue as a company rightly highlights that local multiplayer gaming was an integral part of the N64 experience. But … c'mon, it's 2024, you're not realistically getting four people to huddle 6 feet away from a massive and eye-burstingly bright 4K TV with corded controllers.
Instead, the Analogue3D supports Bluetooth controllers and allows input remapping through the custom OS. More specifically, Analogue points to retro specialist 8BitDo's own upcoming 64 Controller as its suggested controller for the Analogue3D—and in doing so, vindicates my lifelong disdain for the actual N64 controller.
Control(ler) Freak
My hatred for the N64 controller rests on its bizarre, confounding, uncomfortable design; chiefly in that it seemed designed for that small subset of humans with three hands. Its spread of functions over a trio of prongs made it boxy, unwieldy, and—crucially—ill suited to the increasingly complex controls that games were beginning to demand in the waning days of the 20th century.
Its left grip was positively minimalist, with only the traditional D-pad and a single shoulder button. The right housed the primary A and B buttons, four smaller C-buttons, and the right shoulder button.
Then there was that damned middle prong, where the analog stick, start button, and trigger-like Z button on the underside lived. Unless you had truly gargantuan hands, it was nearly impossible to reach all the controls at once.
The N64 controller's defenders will point to its versatility, proclaiming as if it were a virtue that you could hold the outer prongs for traditional 2D games, the middle and right prong for 3D games (at the cost of squishing your hands awkwardly close together), or, in vanishingly few cases, the left and center grips. To which I say this: No other controller before or since has demanded players conduct such a degree of ergonomic gymnastics to figure out how to play a game.
Yes, in many ways the N64 controller was a pioneer. It was the first mainstream joypad to incorporate an analog stick, integral to the new era of 3D games—but even then Nintendo's designers somehow didn't foresee the need to have a second stick to control camera views. The quartet of C-buttons could often approximate the function of a camera stick, but just as often it would be used for input controls instead.
There was a bit of a hack available—select games, such as Rare's GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark, could allow one player to hold two N64 controllers, using the middle prong on each one to approximate twin-stick controls, but it was so unwieldy as to be little more than a gimmick.
In the end, Nintendo's great innovation was almost immediately improved upon with Sony's Dual Analog Controller for the original PlayStation, which launched a mere 10 months later.
Three-Pronged Nightmare
Here, in 2024, both the Analogue3D console and 8BitDo's 64 Controller, each an ardent love letter to Nintendo's original hardware, seem to want to dodge saying that the trident controller just wasn't very good—but their actions speak volumes.
Pointedly, 8BitDo's effort elegantly refines the core elements of the N64 controller into a layout better suited for most players (certainly those with two hands), while keeping some of the more iconic elements in place. The chunkier A and B buttons, the spacing and size of the C buttons, the familiar D-pad and (still singular) analog stick. All are present, just arranged in a way that's actually usable.
It's really a testament to just how beloved Nintendo is by its fans that it was even able to release such a controller in the first place (and even more of one in how it can still sell wireless N64 controllers for the Switch). If almost any other company released a similarly odd controller, it would be eaten alive—just ask Sega's Dreamcast, criticized a few years after the N64 for a controller that felt like holding a dinner plate, and which maintained a sole N64-style thumbstick (along with its own baffling design choices, like the connection cord coming out the bottom of it).
As a console, the Nintendo 64 really was one of the all-time greats. It was home to dozens of best-in-class games, from the classics that are still talked about in hallowed whispers to this day—GoldenEye 007, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time—to lesser-known gems such as Diddy Kong Racing, Ogre Battle 64, or 1080° Snowboarding.
Yet the hill I will die on is that none of them were made any better at all by the design disaster that was the N64 controller. It's taken decades of screaming into the void over how much I hated that joypad, but it seems the universe—or at least parts of the retro gaming community—have finally paid attention. Hallelujah.
The PlayStation lineup is getting bigger, with the addition of the PS5 Slim and the upcoming PS5 Pro. The cybernetic clamshell tower of a console is packed to the gills with killer hardware. The PlayStation 5 can run games in native 4K, hit frame rates over 120 frames per second, and render gorgeous, ray-traced environments in stunning detail. Still, not everything you need comes in the box. A few more add-ons will make your game sessions more enjoyable. From charging docks and gaming headsets to storage expansion cards and the PlayStation Portal, these are the best PS5 accessories of the dozens we've tested.
Updated October 2024: We added the PowerA DualSense Charging Dock, DualSense Edge Controller, PS VR2 Sense Controller Charging Dock, the Samsung S90D QD-OLED TV, and info about the PS VR2 PC adapter.
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Photograph: Simon Hill
A Second Controller
Sony DualSense Controller
It's 2024 and game consoles still don't ship with two controllers. The first thing you'll need with your new PS5 is an extra gamepad if you want to get in on any couch co-op, and the best one is still Sony's official DualSense model. No other third-party controller packs the same level of immersive feedback as the DualSense.
Thanks to the placement of haptic feedback motors throughout the controller, you can feel more nuanced vibrations than you can with other controllers. It's like spatial audio for your hands. If something whips by your character on the left side, you might feel a little rumble under your left hand. Games can control how much resistance the left and right shoulder triggers give you. If you're pulling the drawstring on a bow and arrow, for instance, a game might make it more difficult to press the triggers. It's a great controller, even if strick drift remains a long-term problem.
There's nothing more annoying than inviting your buddy over for some couch co-op, only to discover that your less-favorite controller is dead. That's where charging docks come in. Keeping multiple controllers charged is a task too big for a single USB cable. It's much nicer to drop them in a dock when you're done playing instead of remembering to plug them back in. We previously featured Sony's official charging dock, but this one from PowerA is a little cheaper and, for my money, a nicer experience. It has a mirrored layout with a convenient arch in the center for the charging cable, so it doesn't look out of place no matter how you orient it on your entertainment unit. Plus, it matches the white-on-black aesthetic of the PS5 without looking too ostentatious.
The PS5 has a design that could charitably be described as “bold” but it's certainly eye-catching. Doubly so with the rather wide range of alternate color covers Sony offers. One set has galactic-themed names like Nova Pink and Starlight Blue. The Deep Earth Collection introduces red, blue, and silver covers, each with a metallic sheen. These won't improve your gameplay but can help your PS5 brighten your living room. Just make sure you buy the cover that matches your specific model—a cover made for the Digital Edition, for example, won't work on a PS5 with a disc drive.
It's surprisingly easy to pop your console open and install your own lightning-quick M.2 SSD storage drives. This is one of our favorite bare-drive SSDs. This model achieved speeds of up to 5,100 Mbps in our testing, which is invaluable for tasks like gaming, where sitting around waiting on loading screens can really drag the experience down. The drive also generated very little heat in our testing, which makes it great for the PS5 since the console can get pretty hot.
If you’re not comfortable with cracking open your PS5, I don’t blame you. This WD Black external drive is another great option, though it's ideal for archiving games or storing screenshots and recordings. In our testing, it wasn't quite fast enough to run some of the biggest AAA games directly, but that's what internal storage is for. It's faster and easier to copy games over from an external drive like this one, rather than re-downloading a game from the PlayStation Store, so use this one to keep your library close at hand. We have a few more picks for external drives in our Best Portable SSDs guide.
Few upgrades will improve your home theater and gaming setup more than just getting a soundbar. We have a lot of suggestions in our Best Soundbars guide, but this Yamaha SR-C20A has the dual distinction of not only being our top overall pick but also being one of the more affordable options on our list. It's small, light, and has 100 watts of powerful audio that can fill your living room with every explosion, jump scare, or … whatever sounds cozy games make.
The Arctis 7P+ is one of my favorite gaming headsets for good reason. It gets up to 30 hours of battery life and comes with a wireless USB-C dongle that makes it compatible with most systems. So you can use it for your extended Spider-Man 2 sessions, and then swap it over to your Switch, or even use it with your phone. It doesn't hurt that these headphones sound great too.
Need something a little cheaper? The HyperX Cloud Stinger Core is a great pick if you need a headset that'll produce rich sound with an ultra-clear microphone attached. It's a no-frills headset that gets the job done and stays out of your way. It's also comfortable to wear for long periods, which can be important during marathon gaming sessions when your roommate is trying to sleep. Read our Best Gaming Headsets guide for more options.
In a market that's suddenly flooded with gaming handhelds of sometimes questionable quality, Sony's PlayStation Portal (8/10, WIRED Recommends) stands out in two main ways. First, it's only $200, substantially cheaper than handhelds from Valve, Asus, and Lenovo. The second distinction is … it doesn't play games. Not directly anyway. Instead, it relies on streaming from your existing PlayStation 5. Is your partner using the TV? No problem, hop on the couch next to them and stream your PS5 games to the Portal.
While you can stream games to your phone or tablet with the PS Remote Play app, the Portal is straightforward to set up and simpler to use. It also feels better to play because the device is nearly identical to a typical PS5 controller, but split down the middle with a frankly gorgeous screen stuck between its two halves.
The DualSense Edge is the controller you get when you're getting picked off by Widowmaker one too many times, or you're sick of trying to keep a scope on Genji. This controller has customizable paddles, swappable control sticks, and shortcuts for game-specific profiles so you can tailor everything about the experience to your exact needs.
And I do mean everything. You can customize the actuation point on the L2 and R2 triggers so they'll register a shot from a light tap. The rear paddles can be customized to any button. I found this particularly helpful for flying around as Mercy in Overwatch 2 because the default configuration of her boost is in an awkward place for me. There are also two small Function buttons at the bottom of the controller, which make it easy to swap profiles so you can save different layouts for each game. If you spend many hours playing competitive games online, then this is a great controller for you. The only downside is that some components, like the Stick Module, are constantly out of stock.
★ Alternative: The Scuf Reflex controller ($200) plays a similar role to the DualSense Edge at the same price. It has four removable back paddles instead of two, though I prefer something a little less cluttered. It also requires you to remove the face plate to swap thumbsticks. Those minor differences aside, the Reflex is a great, comparable alternative, especially if you catch it on sale.
The PS5 isn't just an excellent game console. It also has apps to watch shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, Max, and all the other streaming services. The downside is that the PS5 controller is a little annoying to use as a TV remote—especially if you share the space with non-gamers. The PS5 Media Remote is the perfect solution to this nuisance. When paired with the console, it can automatically set itself up to control power and volume to most TVs and soundbars, and the battery life from just two AA batteries lasts for months.
While the PlayStation Portal is probably the best way to stream games from your PS5, the PlayStation Remote Play app is a viable alternative. The service lets you play your PS5 games on your phone or tablet. That might not sound appealing at first, but the Backbone One controller makes the whole system click.
The Backbone One is an attachment for your phone that turns it into a mobile gaming device, similar to a Nintendo Switch. You can use it for other games on your phone too, not just the ones you stream. But streaming games from the PS5 with the Backbone PS5 edition is one of its best use cases. You can sit back on your couch, put something chill on your TV, and still play your PS5 games every bit as smoothly as you would straight from the source.
The Samsung S90D (9/10, WIRED Recommends) is currently our favorite TV for gamers. The QD-OLED panel provides rich colors, perfect black levels, and impressive brightness for an OLED display. It supports up to 120 frames per second on the PS5 for buttery smooth gameplay. It also has excellent off-angle viewing, which helps if (like me) your home's layout doesn't always allow for perfectly centering all parts of the couch to the center of the television.
If a soundbar isn't enough, and you are decking out your gaming space, the Nakamichi Shockwafe system is a great way to go. It's super expensive, but for that price, you get two subwoofers, a soundbar, and four surround sound speakers. It's overkill in the best way. With all the speakers set up, this system turns even the most humble YouTube video into a cinema-level experience.
They say it's the thought that counts, but that doesn't apply very well to expensive gaming devices. From a hardware perspective, the $550 PS VR2 is a pricey yet worthy successor to the original, but there's a very small list of unique, interesting games to run on it.
The PS VR2 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) features impressive eye-tracking, which stands out in games like Horizon Call of the Mountain. In this title, you can highlight menu items just by looking at them. The Sense VR controllers boast best-in-class haptic feedback, making it feel like you're grabbing something when you're interacting with objects in VR. It's one of the nicest VR headsets I've played with, but I'm a big believer in buying things based on what they are, not what they promise to be.
Right now, the PS VR2 is a comfortable, capable headset with quite a few VR games you could get elsewhere and a couple you can't. You can hop into a VR environment in No Man's Sky or play a few rounds of Beat Saber, but Horizon Call of the Mountain is still at the top of the pile a year and a half later. After being delayed for months, the highly anticipated horror game Phasmophobia is finally here this Halloween, but that's about it.
If all you want is Beat Saber, then you might be better off getting a Quest 3S, but if you also want to try the unique Horizon Call of the Mountain (and I do think that's worthwhile!), then go for it. Just don't buy it expecting a flood of new content in the future. If you do buy the PS VR2, I highly suggest snagging the Sense Controller Charging Station, as it makes recharging the controllers a breeze.
The PS VR2 headset might be an impressive bit of hardware, but since it doesn't have the software library to back it up, it can be a bit of a sunk cost. Sony tried to compensate for this by releasing a PC adapter that lets you use the headset with your Steam game library. It's a tempting idea, but in my experience, it's just not worth it. The Meta Quest 3 is a better fit and slightly cheaper if you're not looking for the highest-end, PC-compatible headset—and the Meta Quest 3S is even cheaper. While playing games with the PS VR2 attached to my desktop, I had issues with controller connectivity and visual glitches that were disorienting at best and nauseating at worst.
Some features that make the PS VR2 a worthwhile headset also aren't compatible when using the PC adapter either. Eye-tracking isn't available, and neither is HDR support. The latter is especially disappointing given the PS VR2's OLED panels. If you already have a PS VR2 headset and you're looking to get a little more out of your investment, then the adapter might be worth a look, but if your cost isn't already sunk, it might be better to avoid this one.
Eric Ravenscraft is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED and is based in Austin, Texas. He ha guided readers on how to use technology for nearly a decade for publications including Lifehacker, OneZero, and The New York Times. He also streams on Twitch for WIRED occasionally and can be... Read more
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.
A plastic microfiber found in the exhaled breath of a bottlenose dolphin is nearly 14 times smaller than a strand of hair and can be seen only with a microscope.
Image courtesy Miranda Dziobak/College of Charleston
Our study found that microplastic particles exhaled by bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) are similar in chemical composition to those identified in human lungs. It’s not known whether dolphins are exposed to more of these pollutants than people are.
Why It Matters
In humans, inhaled microplastics can cause lung inflammation, which can lead to problems including tissue damage, excess mucus, pneumonia, bronchitis, scarring, and possibly cancer. Since dolphins and humans inhale similar plastic particles, dolphins may be at risk for the same lung problems.
The ocean releases microplastics into the air through surface froth and wave action. Once the particles are released, wind can transport them to other locations.
In fact, bubble bursts caused by wave energy can release 100,000 metric tons of microplastics into the atmosphere each year. Since dolphins and other marine mammals breathe at the water’s surface, they may be especially vulnerable to exposure.
Where there are more people, there is usually more plastic. But for the tiny plastic particles floating in the air, this connection isn’t always true. Airborne microplastics are not limited to heavily populated areas; they pollute undeveloped regions too.
Our research found microplastics in the breath of dolphins living in both urban and rural estuaries, but we don’t know whether there are major differences in amounts or types of plastic particles between the two habitats.
During these brief permitted health assessments, we held a petri dish or a customized spirometer—a device that measures lung function—above the dolphin’s blowhole to collect samples of the animals’ exhaled breath. Using a microscope in our colleague’s lab, we checked for tiny particles that looked like plastic, such as pieces with smooth surfaces, bright colors or a fibrous shape.
Since plastic melts when heated, we used a soldering needle to test whether these suspected pieces were plastic. To confirm they were indeed plastic, our colleague used a specialized method called Raman spectroscopy, which uses a laser to create a structural fingerprint that can be matched to a specific chemical.
Our study highlights how extensive plastic pollution is—and how other living things, including dolphins, are exposed. While the impacts of plastic inhalation on dolphins’ lungs are not yet known, people can help address the microplastic pollution problem by reducing plastic use and working to prevent more plastic from polluting the oceans.
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Rating:
9/10
WIRED
Excellent dual-camera setup. Improved wide-angle camera performance. Omnidirectional obstacle avoidance. Long battery life. Simple and forgiving to fly.
TIRED
Gives existing Air 3 owners limited reasons to upgrade. Weight class increases paperwork and restricts flight locations. No adjustable aperture.
WIRED loved 2023’s DJI Air 3 (9/10, WIRED Recommends). The midrange consumer drone was easy and safe to fly and compact enough to carry almost anywhere, but I found the most appealing feature to be its innovative dual-camera setup. By packing both wide-angle and medium telephoto cameras (each with its own 1/1.3-inch CMOS sensor), it expanded my creative options for aerial photos and video. I could shoot wide vistas one moment, then switch to the telephoto lens to get closer to a particular feature of the landscape or compress it against the background for more dramatic framing.
The new DJI Air 3S takes the concept a step further by increasing the sensor size of the wide-angle camera to a full inch, which improves dynamic range and low-light image quality. It also adds built-in SSD storage for photos and videos and boosts its spatial awareness courtesy of front-facing lidar sensors (while retaining the Air 3’s vision-based sensors for other directions), enabling it to spot and avoid obstacles more easily.
Photograph: Sam Kielsden
The DJI Air 3S maintains the compact dimensions of the Air 3, and when not in use and folded down, it’s about the size of a 16-ounce (500-mililiter) water bottle. This isn’t one of the smallest or lightest DJI drones around. The company’s new Neo model is tiny, while its Mini line offers decent camera performance in an 8.7-ounce (249-gram) drone that can be legally flown almost anywhere.
Weighing the Options
At 25.5 ounces (724 grams), roughly the same as the Air 3, the Air 3S falls into a trickier category of aircraft that, depending on where you live in the world, requires a bit more effort to get in the air. I don’t mean in the sense of flying—in fact it couldn’t be any easier to take off, pilot around, and land—but in the level of paperwork required. Pilots in the US using it for recreational purposes will need to register it with the Federal Aviation Administration and obtain its Trust certificate by passing an online test. In the EU and UK, things are, sadly, a little more involved, with pilots having to undertake a paid (around £100) online course and pass a rather more stringent exam. Pass it and they’ll be permitted to fly it closer than 4,902 feet (150 meters) to built-up areas or public parks; even after passing that, they will need to keep the Air 3S 164 feet (50 meters) or more horizontally away from people.
Photograph: Sam Kielsden
As a UK resident currently without the certificate, I had to be quite careful where I flew the Air 3S. Living on the coast at least meant I was able to fly it out over the sea, where it could easily be kept the requisite distance from people, buildings, parks, and beaches. If I lived in the middle of a large town or city here, however, I’d find the restrictions too frustrating to deal with and opt for an ultra-lightweight, fly-anywhere drone such as the DJI Mini 4 Pro. I suspect most casual drone users feel the same way.
I Made a Wholesome OnlyFans to Try to Make Ends Meet
A cohort of content creators say it's possible to make money on OnlyFans without stripping. I put that claim to the test.
Photo-illustration: Jacqui VanLiew; Getty Images
As I leave my house on an overcast Tuesday morning to walk the dog, I’m accosted by a neighbor who cheerily calls down the street: “I hear you have an OnlyFans now!” I start to wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake.
OnlyFans has—how shall I put it—a reputation. Like many online platforms, it matches content creators with their audience. But OnlyFans is primarily known for one type of content: sex.
When friends and acquaintances hear I—a 43-year-old father of two—have set up an OnlyFans account, they are intrigued. When I explain I’m only posting content that’s nonsexual and very much safe for work, their next question is “Why?” In their minds, it’s clear that “having an OnlyFans” means doing sexy stuff on the internet, for money.
OnlyFans, a UK-based outfit that raked in $658 million in pretax profit last year, wants to shake this image. For every university student raising cash by sharing nudes, there’s a wholesome housewife uploading DIY tips or an up-and-coming musician posting his latest tracks, at least if you go by the accounts highlighted on the company’s blog.
“Everyone’s doing a dance on the rest of social media, where it’s like, ‘Hey, you’re not supposed to show people your penis here and you’re not supposed to say crazy, wild shit,’” John Hastings, a 39-year-old Canadian comic, tells me via phone from his home in Los Angeles. On OnlyFans however, he still has people who slide into his DMs just to say “I want to see your feet, I'm not here for jokes.”
Like all the safe-for-work creators I speak to, Hastings has a presence on many social networks, from Instagram to X to YouTube. The audience on OnlyFans will usually be smaller than on other sites, but followers are often more engaged and—importantly—must have a bank account linked to their profile, ready to be prized open.
“It is a different world, for sure, compared to the people who are on my other social media platforms,” says Dudley Alexander, an R&B artist who releases music under the moniker Nevrmind.
Alexander, 33, joined OnlyFans in 2019, before the site’s profile surged as the Covid-19 pandemic pushed many previously IRL activities online. As such, he’s a pioneer of the safe-for-work OnlyFans scene and has amassed more than 67,000 likes on his page. (OnlyFans only displays a user’s like count publicly; the follower count, which is usually higher, is hidden.)
Most of those people are there for his music, but, like Hastings, he’s had some fans cross the line into asking for sexual content. “There are people who try to get me to offer other types of content and stuff like that,” he says.
Alexander isn’t opposed to showing the occasional rippling bicep or taut pectoral but declines to go the full monty. “I do more of the R&B look, where it’s still tasteful but it’s not completely nude,” he explains.
For the uninitiated, the OnlyFans homepage has a simple design, with lots of white space, sans-serif text in black and blue, and a few embedded videos. These videos feature young men or women (usually women) working on DIY projects or making recipes—they just tend to wear less clothing or show more cleavage than you might expect on a site’s front door.
Venture beyond the homepage, however, and you can find some seriously X-rated content. OnlyFans declines to break out how the $5.3 billion it funneled to creators last year was split between sexual and nonsexual content. “We don’t categorize our creators into SFW/NSFW. OnlyFans is all over 18 so we don’t need to,” says spokesperson Normandie Tottman, an external spokesperson speaking for the company.
But I want my own tiny share of those billions—and I’m prepared to risk public ridicule to get them. So, one Wednesday in late September, having packed the kids safely off to school, I set up an account of my very own.
After being verified on the platform, I decide my debut will be a one-minute video simply introducing myself. I immediately bump up against OnlyFans’ discoverability problem.
Whether you’re on OnlyFans for numismatics or nudes, finding the content you want is hard. The site’s search functionality is severely limited, allowing you to search the posts of only people you already follow. There’s also no algorithmically driven feed to surface posts you might like. Follow 10 comedians on Instagram and the app will be sure to push you more jokes. Follow 10 comedians on OnlyFans and you’ll still have no idea how to find an 11th.
OnlyFans tells me the lack of proper search functionality is a deliberate safety feature, “so fans don’t stumble across content they don’t want to see,” says Tottman. Several third-party sites, with names like OnlyFinder and NosyFan, have stepped in to fill the vacuum—for those who very much do want to see.
If people are going to find my OnlyFans page, I have to do what everyone else does: Promote it elsewhere. So I take a deep breath and write posts for my few thousand followers on X and LinkedIn.
On usually sober LinkedIn, the vibe is riotous. Reactions include “I shudder to think what you’re posting there,” “let me know when the NSFW one launches pls,” and “you’ve got to give the people what they want, Andrew.” My post on X mainly gets responses from bot accounts called things like United Babes, suggesting we follow each other’s OnlyFans pages. The topic even comes up at my regular five-a-side football kickabout.
The result of all this public attention? One measly follower on OnlyFans. To win over some more, I embrace the imperfect and upload a home-recorded video of me indulging in one of my favorite pastimes: reading a classic novel (Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome). I also post a wind-blown update from the reservoir where I sometimes go sailing.
Top content like this sees my follower count surge to a mighty five. Time to slam down the paywall and rake in some cold, hard cash. Time for my first locked post on OnlyFans.
Asking subscribers to pay for nontitillating content poses an awkward question: What can I possibly offer that’s worth any money? As a 20-year media veteran, I decide to post some tips for how PR professionals can best get their message across to journalists. Gold, surely?
Unfortunately, despite promoting the video across my X and LinkedIn accounts once again, I find no one willing to pay the $5 to view it.
I’m starting to get tired with the platform’s interface, which makes casual browsing hard. A major difference between OnlyFans and other social platforms is that creators’ posts—even those that are thoroughly safe for work—are all locked unless you register and subscribe to that page. While you can browse most Instagram, YouTube, or TikTok posts without logging in or following an account, OnlyFans exists within its own walled garden.
Despite these limitations, OnlyFans’ creator accounts increased by 29 percent last year to 4.1 million, according to its parent company’s latest financial filing. Fan accounts grew by 28 percent to 305 million. (The company doesn’t say how many of these accounts are active.) More than 300 million users and I can’t find even one willing to pay for my content. They can’t all be there for porn, can they?
For creators, a major advantage of OnlyFans over Instagram or TikTok is the way direct payments from fans are baked in from the start. Many rival apps expect creators to post content for free, with the only reward coming from growing online clout as their follower counts climb. OnlyFans provides a smaller pool of users, but one with verified payment details who are just a click away from emptying their wallets.
Another draw for creators on OnlyFans is the flexibility it gives over how they charge. Want to paywall your entire profile? Pick a price between $4.99 and $50 a month. Want to add fees to unlock specific posts? Slap on your own price tag, up to $100. Want to make fans pay to message you? All these options and more are easy to set up.
“All your subscribers are invested in you. They’re interested in you, your lifestyle,” says Liam O’Neill, a 33-year-old professional golfer who has amassed 2,300 likes on his OnlyFans profile after some 18 months on the site. He also has a sponsorship deal with OnlyFans to display the company’s logo on his golf bag at tournaments. “It’s much more personable. I can easily reply to people on OnlyFans DM, whereas on Instagram it can be a bit more diluted.”
O’Neill keeps his main feed free, but charges followers for suggestions on how to improve their golf swing via DMs. Alexander, the musician, provides a menu of paid options on his profile, like “$35 for me to sing you a personalized Happy Birthday message.” He experimented with paywalling his content behind a $4.99 monthly subscription, but finds fans prefer more piecemeal payments.
OnlyFans takes a 20 percent cut from all these payments, accumulating a handy $1.3 billion in revenue last year. Only 41 percent of that was from recurring subscriptions, lending weight to Alexander’s personal experience. In its accounts, the company reports having just 42 staff members, leading to a jaw-dropping $31 million in revenue per employee.
OnlyFans’ commission is low compared with some rivals. YouTube, for example, takes a 45 percent cut of advertising revenue generated from its longer videos, and only for creators with a sufficiently large following. The cut is even higher for posts on YouTube’s Shorts platform.
Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the average OnlyFans creator account netted some $1,300 last year, although research suggests the vast majority of income flows to the top 10 percent of accounts, leaving very little for those at the bottom of the pack. Many (sexual) accounts insist they make millions of dollars a year, often posting screenshots on social media to back up their claims.
By contrast, most of the SFW OnlyFans creators I talked to for this article were coy about their income from the site. Nate Craig, a 47-year-old comedian based in Los Angeles, agreed to share his numbers, but they’re hardly inspiring: He’s made less than $100 from fans in the year or two he’s been on the platform.
Craig isn’t really on OnlyFans for the occasional $5 tip, however. Like many SFW performers, the platform paid him to join. A producer working for OnlyFans approached him with a tempting offer: OnlyFans would film one of his sets and pay him a “good” sum for his trouble (Craig declined to specify how much) on the condition that the stand-up would share the OnlyFans-watermarked video widely across his other social media—and agree to post regularly on his OnlyFans page.
“They were pretty straightforward about it. They were like, ‘We want to open up our site to other types of content creators,’” the comedian tells me on a video call, while bouncing his infant son on his knee. “They didn’t say this, but it was clear they wanted to expand their brand.”
Despite OnlyFans’ best efforts to diversify into more SFW terrain, it still has one key problem: Not many people who want that kind of content want to see it on OnlyFans.
After I promote my paywalled OnlyFans post on LinkedIn, one PR professional, the target market for my advice, replies, “I’m super curious about the contents of the video but also do not want to give OF my personal data and sign up for an account.” Another respondent says he would be “worried about people seeing OnlyFans on my card statement,” while a third, a former newsroom colleague, seems disgusted with the whole enterprise.
“I want to read your thoughts on PR and journalism, but joining OnlyFans is a strict no-no,” he gripes. “I think your potential subscribers will be afraid they will be seen as consumers of the other thing that this platform offers and who only use you as a human shield.”
Ouch.
So what have I gained from my OnlyFans adventure? After a couple of weeks, I’m sad to report I have earned a grand total of zero dollars. I didn’t even get anyone sliding into my DMs to propose something inappropriate. But I did get something fun to talk about the next time I bump into the neighbors.
Will & Harper, His Three Daughters, and It’s What’s Inside are just a few of the movies you should watch on Netflix this month.
Still from It's What's Inside.Courtesy of Netflix
Netflix has plenty of movies to watch, but it’s a real mixed bag. Sometimes finding the right film at the right time can seem like an impossible task. Fret not, we’re here to help. Below is a list of some of our favorites currently on the streaming service—from dramas to comedies to thrillers.
Nine college friends reunite for a bachelor party—what could go wrong? Plenty, when one of the party games involves an experimental mind-swapping device. As the attendees play the ultimate game of Mafia, trying to guess who’s inhabiting whose body, relationships fray and their very sense of self is eroded. As the bodies start falling, you might start feeling like a player yourself, unsure if anyone can be trusted. With a talented young cast that master one another’s layered performances as they hop bodies, this fresh indie thriller from writer-director Greg Jardin masterfully balances dark humor with even darker plot twists.
Kat went off the rails following the deaths of her parents five years ago. Now she has one last chance to steer her life back on track at a new school and finally conquer her personal demons. Unfortunately, she’s marked as a Hell Maiden on her first day, attracting the attention of actual demon brothers Wendell and Wild (voiced by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, respectively). Tempted by the scheming siblings’ promise to resurrect her parents if she summons them to the living world—where they plan to out-do their infernal father at his own game—Kat (Lyric Ross) is drawn into a macabre plot that threatens the living and dead alike. Directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline) and produced by Peele (Nope, Get Out), this is another fantastic entry in Selick’s canon of mesmerizingly dark stop-motion masterpieces.
Will Ferrell likely needs no introduction, but as former head writer of Saturday Night Live, Harper Steele is more accustomed to life behind the camera. Joining the hit show in the same week back in 1995, the pair struck up a decades-long friendship—so when Harper wrote to tell Ferrell she was transitioning to live as a woman, it was a big change for them both. It also formed the basis for this beautiful, heartwarming, and often laugh-out-loud funny road trip documentary following the duo as they cross the US in an old Jeep Grand Wagoneer, reconnecting and learning what their friendship looks like now. It's awkward viewing at times—some of Ferrell's questions blur the line between bawdy and simply rude—but it's a raw and authentic journey for them both. Beyond the personal touches, Will & Harper is a timely view of what America looks like for a trans person right now, making it possibly one of the most important documentaries Netflix has produced.
As their father approaches the end of his life, sisters Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), Katie (Carrie Coon), and Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) are forced to reconnect while waiting for the inevitable. Bleak stuff, but also grounds for masterful performances from the lead trio, with Rachel having taken on the bulk of care for months, Katie casting imperious demands despite avoiding the situation, and new-agey Christina trying to keep the peace—despite being at a breaking point herself. This is almost a locked-room piece, the apartment trapping the women, forcing them to come to terms with not only their father's death but their own relationships with each other, all while Vincent (Jay O. Sanders) haunts them even before his passing. Death may loom over director Azazel Jacobs’ drama, but His Three Daughters ultimately proves oddly life-affirming.
When Seita and his young sister Setsuko are orphaned in the wake of the fire-bombing of Kobe during the final days of World War II, the siblings are forced into terrible circumstances to survive. Stuck between abusive extended family and the sheer desperation of scavenging around the ruins of their destroyed hometown, it's a bleak existence—and also the basis for one of Studio Ghibli's finest works. Directed by Isao Takahata and based on a short story by Akiyuki Nosaka, Grave of the Fireflies is unapologetically harrowing in its exploration of how war and nationalism chew up the most vulnerable, yet peppered with moments of unwavering love as Seita attempts to protect Setsuko's innocence. This searing wartime drama is sobering but essential viewing, a film that's more than earned its ranking in the upper echelons of the Best Studio Ghibli films.
Goreng (Iván Massagué) awakes in a cell in a vertical prison, where food is provided only by a platform that descends level by level, pausing only long enough for inmates to eat before traveling ever lower. While there’s food enough for all, prisoners on higher levels gorge themselves, leaving those below to starve. It’s the perfect recipe for violence, betrayal, and rebellion in director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s tense Spanish thriller. Equal parts horror, dystopian sci-fi, and social commentary, The Platform works as not only a none-too-subtle statement on consumption culture, but also a stark examination of the depths to which desperate people can sink. It’s absolutely not for everyone (scenes involving cannibalism and suicide make it a particularly troubling watch in places) but thanks to its claustrophobic, brutalist setting and stellar cast performances, it is mesmerizing entertainment. With a sequel about to land, now is the perfect time to dive into one of the most visually striking and narratively provocative films on Netflix.
When corrupt cops run ex-Marine Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) off the road for cycling while Black, they also seize the money he had been planning to use to post his cousin’s bail. Despite the injustice, Terry tries to do everything by the book but finds almost every aspect of the legal system against him. Out of patience, and fueled by immensely justified anger, he sets about tearing out the rot from the small town, aided only by court clerk Summer (AnnaSophia Robb). Writer-director Jeremy Saulnier could have made Rebel Ridge merely a modern day First Blood, but while there’s plenty of visceral, bone-breaking fight scenes, it’s the film’s righteously angry look at the baked-in failings of the American legal system that gives this its bite—all while cementing Pierre as an action star to watch.
Lin-Manuel Miranda's feature directorial debut sees Andrew Garfield as playwright Jonathan Larson, the real life creator of Rent, struggling to finish his signature work while approaching his totemic 30th birthday. An adaptation of Larson's own semiautobiographical stage musical—produced posthumously, premiering in 2001—Miranda's cinematic take perfectly captures the tortures of the creative process, charting Harper's years-long battle to cement a legacy and exploring how perfectionism can be a demon. In reality, Larson died in January 1996, the same day as Rent's preview performance off Broadway, a sad fact that lends tick, tick... BOOM! a sense of even greater urgency amid its joyous musical performances.
Based on real events, Wicked Little Letters is set in 1920, in the quaint English town of Littlehampton. When the well-to-do family of Edith Swan starts receiving abusive mail, Irish immigrant Rose Gooding—who has a reputation as a foul-mouthed troublemaker, and who recently fell out with Edith—is suspect number one. Yet as the plague of "poison pen" notes spreads, becoming a national scandal, only overlooked police officer Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan) believes that Rose is being set up. Oscar-winner Olivia Colman is on top form as Edith, while Jessie Buckley delights with a fiery performance as Rose in this surprisingly uproarious comedy.
First up: This is absolutely, positively, unquestionably not for younger viewers—but that's to be expected from director Takashi Miike (Ichi the Killer). Despite veering into more family-friendly fare with the video game and manga adaptations Ace Attorney and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Miike returns to his shock-horror slasher roots with Lumberjack the Monster. It follows Akira Ninomiya (Kazuya Kamenashi), a lawyer willing to kill to get ahead, and the city-spanning grudge match that follows when a masked serial killer—the titular Lumberjack—takes a stab at him. As gory and over-the-top as Miike has ever been, and with added edges of surreality, this isn't for the squeamish, but it's a captivating return to form for the infamous creator.
Based on the true story of the San Felipe Mustangs, The Long Game follows WWII vet turned high school superintendent J.B. Peña (Jay Hernandez) in the 1950s as he forges a group of Mexican-American teenagers with natural golfing talent—but nowhere to play, thanks to the racist and exclusionary practices of the official club in their Texan town—into a championship winning team. While the film has all the hallmarks of an underdog sports movie (and maybe a few too many golfing-as-life metaphors), director Julio Quintana dodges the genre's most cloying clichés, instead focusing on the frustrations and ambitions of the young players—particularly Joe Treviño (Julian Works), the de facto leader of the team who subverts expectations by rejecting even wanting to play at a club that doesn't respect him. With its fantastic cast bolstered by the likes of Cheech Marin, Dennis Quaid, and Jaina Lee Ortiz, The Long Game is a beautiful tale of shattering barriers, on and off the golf course.
After two previous riotous excursions to glamorous Beverly Hills (we don't count 1994's Beverly Hills Cop III), detective Axel Foley (a resurgent Eddie Murphy, proving he's lost none of his 1980s sparkle) is back in California after causing a modicum of public destruction in his native Detroit, only to find his estranged daughter Jane’s (Taylour Paige) life is in danger. Legacy sequels decades divorced from their original outings can be hit-or-miss, but Axel F hits that sweet balance between nostalgia and revival, giving Murphy plenty of old and new allies and enemies to bounce off. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in particular, impresses as Bobby Abbott, Foley's new partner in BHPD—and Jane's ex—while familiar faces Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Jeffrey Friedman (Paul Reiser) make welcome returns without feeling like gratuitous cameos. Best of all is Axel F's reliance on practical effects and stunt work, notably in a series of genuinely exciting chase sequences ripped straight from the ’80s. A throwback that’s looking forward, this is the best Beverly Hills Cop since the original.
Between the lighthearted comedy IF… and horror flick Imaginary, cinema in 2024 is leaning hard on imaginary friends. This gorgeously animated Japanese take on the concept is the best of the lot, though, a whimsical fable full of stunning visuals and big ideas. Adapted from the book by A. F. Harrold, The Imaginary follows young Amanda and her best friend Rudger, brought into being by her own mind, as they share countless adventures. But as Amanda ages, Rudger faces the fate of all Imaginaries: fading away as their humans forget them. The latest film from director Yoshiyuki Momose (Mary and the Witch's Flower) and Studio Ponoc—spiritual successor to the mighty Studio Ghibli—this is a stunning ode to the power of imagination and friendship.
This so-serious-it's-ludicrous French creature feature sees Bérénice Bejo as marine specialist Sophia Assalas, who is hunting down a mako shark that has not only spontaneously mutated to survive in the freshwater Seine but is also about to give birth to a host of baby man-eating sharks. Worse still? Paris is about to hold a triathlon, with the swim portion set to become an all-you-can-eat buffet! Look, not everything on this list needs to be high art—sometimes, you just need to see a mutant shark straight up chomping on people while increasingly desperate humans start blowing stuff up. Press Play, turn brain off, enjoy.
Gary Johnson (Glen Powell) is a mild-mannered professor of philosophy—and a contract killer. Well, not quite. He just poses as one, working with the New Orleans Police Department to trap people looking to hire a hit man. It's a role he's surprisingly good at, but when Madison (Adria Arjona) looks to have her abusive husband “dealt” with, Gary begins to fall for her—and the consequences could be fatal for real. In another creator’s hands, Hit Man might have been either overly grim or simply insubstantial (it's loosely based on a true story), but director Richard Linklater leverages his signature uses of sparkling dialog and brilliantly realized characters to deliver a smart action-comedy that explores the roles people play in society as much as it serves up mistaken-identity hijinks.
Despite the presence of the eponymous kaiju, Godzilla Minus One is a film rooted in the humanity of its protagonists, deserter kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) and Noriko Ōishi (Minami Hamabe), a survivor of the bombings of Tokyo. Thrown together as an ersatz family as they raise an orphaned baby, their attempts to build a new life turn chaotic when the irradiated reptile descends on the city just as it's beginning to recover. Director Takashi Yamazaki's reimagining of Japan's premier kaiju netted the King of Monsters its first-ever Oscar, picking up a statue for Best Visual Effects at the 2024 Academy Awards, but this is a film that exceeds mere spectacle—it's a searing examination of life after war, and how a nation grapples with being on the losing side.
Set against the backdrop of a Britain on the brink of war, The Dig chronicles one of the greatest archeological finds ever discovered in the Isles: the 1939 Sutton Hoo excavation. When wealthy landowner Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) hires archeologist Basil Brown (Ralph Fiennes) to dig up large mounds on her property, the pair make a startling discovery—a ship from the Dark Ages that turns out to be the burial site of someone of tremendous distinction. But as word of the treasure spreads, more high-profile archeologists move in on Pretty and Brown's find to take ownership. A slow build but worthy of the acclaim it's received, The Dig is a stunning, well-acted period drama about a largely untold piece of history.
Based on the 1985 manga by Tsukasa Hojo, City Hunter is a long-running franchise in its native Japan and has previously spawned Hong Kong and French live-action adaptations. Thankfully, there’s no homework required for this modern take, a stand-alone tale of wise-cracking, womanizing "sweeper" Ryo Saeba (Ryohei Suzuki)—think a cross between private detective, bodyguard, and bounty hunter. When his partner Makimura is killed by someone hopped up on a drug that grants super strength, Ryo is forced to partner with Makimura’s sister Kaori (Misato Morita) to avenge him, a quest that drags him into a vast criminal conspiracy and sets the stage for some of the most incredible action set pieces you’ll lay eyes on. Channeling the spirit of ’80s action flicks but with modern production values, sharp comedic beats, and a charismatic lead performance from Suzuki, City Hunter is hugely entertaining.
Suzume Iwato (voiced by Nanoka Hara in Japanese, Nichole Sakura in English) lives with her aunt on Japan's southern island, having lost her mother in the Tōhoku earthquake of 2011. When a handsome young stranger named Souta (Hokuto Matsumura, Josh Keaton) asks her for directions to some local ruins, she follows him out of curiosity but disturbs a living keystone, accidentally unleashing an ancient power that threatens to destroy the entire country. Drawn into Souta's world, the pair chase the keystone, now in the form of a cat, across Japan in a desperate bid to reseal the destructive entity—a quest that would be easier if Souta hadn't been transformed into a child's wooden chair. The latest film from Makoto Shinkai (Your Name, Weathering with You), Suzume is a breathtakingly animated slice of magical realism with a surrealist edge—but beyond the spectacle, it's a heart-warming tale of community and humanity, each stop on the unlikely pair's journey a snapshot of people and families coming together in the wake of tragedy.
A colossal hit in its native China, The Wandering Earth earned more than $700 million at the country's box office, prompting Netflix to snap up the rights to stream the sci-fi sensation internationally. The film follows a group of astronauts, sometime far into the future, attempting to guide Earth away from the Sun, which is expanding into a red giant. The problem? Jupiter is also in the way. While Earth is being steered by 10,000 fire-blowing engines that have been strapped to the surface, the humans still living on the planet must find a way to survive the ever-changing environmental conditions. An adaptation of a short story by Cixin Liu, this is the perfect accompaniment for Netflix's adaptation of Liu's The Three-Body Problem.
By any measure, Masamune lives a normal teenage existence in his rural Japanese hometown—until the local steel works erupts, mysteriously sealing the entire town in an inexplicable time bubble where no one ages. As the small community struggles to adapt, a culture that fears change emerges, initially from the presumption that residents would need to rejoin the outside world as they left it, and eventually forbids even new relationships. Yet when Masamune's strange classmate Mutsumi lures him to the ill-fated factory and introduces him to a feral young girl who should not exist, the bizarre reality they all inhabit begins to collapse. A fantasy twist on notions of youthful rebellion, the prison of familiarity, and fears of change, Maboroshi—meaning "illusion"—is a dazzling sophomore feature from director Mari Okada—whose 2018 debut Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms won accolades around the globe—and one that firmly establishes her as one of the most exciting creators working in animation today.
Young Orion is afraid of everything—but especially the dark. Sure would be a shame if the manifestation of darkness itself turned up one night, huh? While a small twist in tone could make for a horror story, this charming animated feature from DreamWorks is instead a delight, as Dark—along with the other embodiments of the night, including Sweet Dreams and Insomnia—take Orion on a journey to show that the night isn't anything to be afraid of. Hitting similar vibes as Inside Out, this exploration of childhood fears—and overcoming them—makes for a great family feature.
Written by and starring Ali Wong and Randall Park, Always Be My Maybe tells the story of two inseparable childhood friends whose lives veer dramatically apart after a grief-stricken rendezvous in their teenage years. Wong plays Sasha Tran, a superstar chef whose stratospheric career barely papers over the cracks in her faltering relationship. Park, meanwhile, plays Marcus Kim, whose ambitions have taken him no further than the local dive bar and his father's air conditioning firm. Fate—and a bizarre cameo from Keanu Reeves—conspire to bring the two leads back together in a thoughtful and hilarious romantic comedy.
A weekend getaway at a luxury vacation rental property for Amanda, Clay, and their kids, Archie and Rose, takes a sinister turn in the wake of an inexplicable blackout. When the house's owner, George, and his daughter, Ruth, return early, suspicions mount—but a growing herd of deer lurking outside the house, failing vehicles, and scattered reports of attacks across the country force the two families to rely on each other in the face of what may be the end of the world. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, and with a star-studded cast including Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke, Myha'la, and Kevin Bacon, this film relishes in keeping the audiences as uncertain as its characters are, explaining little and leaving questions you'll be mulling for days.
Written and directed by Dan Levy, this touching drama explores the difficulty of moving on from tragedy. When Marc's (Levy) husband Oliver dies, he is unable to grieve after learning of an affair—and a weekend in Paris with his supportive friends Sophie (Ruth Negga) and Thomas (Himesh Patel), each facing their own existential relationship dilemmas, only makes things worse when it's revealed Oliver was secretly renting an apartment there. While the mournful subject matter will be tonal whiplash for anyone drawn to this by Levy's performance in Schitt's Creek, Good Grief proves an empathetic exploration of the complexities of bereavement, one that's a lot warmer and more life-affirming than viewers might expect going in.
Directed by George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom), this biopic explores the life of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin. While perhaps best known as one of the chief organizers of 1963's March on Washington, Rustin was also openly, unapologetically gay at a time when that was phenomenally rare—and the film doesn't shy away from how that alienated many of the people he worked with, his sexuality often seen as a threat to the movement. A much-needed spotlight on an overlooked but pivotal figure in the Civil Rights Movement, elevated by a central performance from a spectacularly well-cast Colman Domingo as Rustin himself.
Fleeing war-torn South Sudan, Bol (Ṣọpẹ́ Dìrísù) and Rial (Wunmi Mosaku) are now living in a run-down house at the edge of London, harassed by their neighbors even as they try to fit in. The couple are also haunted by the lives they left behind—both figuratively and (possibly) literally, with visions of their late daughter Nyagak, who did not survive the journey, fading in and out of the walls of their dismal new home. The real horror of His House isn't the strange visions, haunted house, or potential ghosts, though—it’s the bleakness of the lives Bol and Rial are forced into, the hostility and dehumanization of the UK asylum process, the racism both overt and casual, all coupled with the enormous sense of loss they carry with them. Blending the macabre with the mundane, director Remi Weekes delivers a tense, challenging film that will haunt viewers as much as its characters.
Paul Edima (Richard Mofe-Damijo) lives a peaceful life as a church deacon, trying to atone for—or at least forget—his former deeds as a highly trained special agent. Plans to leave his violent and bloody past behind fall apart when his son is framed for a murder and then killed by corrupt police, forcing him to fall back on old skills as he seeks vengeance. Shades of Taken, yes, but it's director Editi Effiong's raw energy and fresh takes on familiar action movie formulas that—backed by one of the highest budgets in "Nollywood" history—have this gritty outing topping the most-watched lists as far afield as South Korea. Expand your cinematic horizons and see what the fuss is about.
There's about 110 miles of mean water between Cuba and Florida, filled with jellyfish, man o' wars, and sharks and prone to terrible weather. The idea of trying to swim the route solo might raise a few concerns, let alone doing it with as few protective measures as possible—but that's exactly what long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad did, and at the age of 64, no less. This biopic from directors Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Free Solo) casts Annette Bening as an almost monomaniacally obsessed Nyad, determined to prove to everyone—or maybe just herself—that she can complete the marathon swim that had bested her all her life. Meanwhile, Jodie Foster's turn as Bonnie Stoll, Nyad's friend, coach, and ex-partner, provides a sense of stability against the force of nature that the increasingly, almost dangerously determined Nyad becomes. While Nyad is somewhat more fanciful than Vasarhelyi and Chin's documentary works and glosses over some aspects of the real-life Nyad's history, it stands as a testament to human determination, friendship, and the power of sheer stubbornness.
Ignore its 41-minute runtime and set aside any arguments over whether its brevity "counts" as a movie—this fantastic outing sees Wes Anderson adapt a Roald Dahl work for the first time since 2009's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the result is just as brilliant. Rather than stop-motion, as with Mr. Fox, this is a live-action affair headlined by a top tier performance from Benedict Cumberbatch as the eponymous Henry Sugar, a bored rich man who gains a strange power and ultimately uses it to better the world. With a broader cast including Dev Patel, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley, and shot with all of Anderson's trademark aesthetic sensibilities, this really is a wonderful story. And, if you're still bothered by the short run time, take solace in the fact that this forms a tetraptych with The Rat Catcher, The Swan, and Poison; 15-minute shorts with same cast, directed by Anderson, and all adapting other Dahl tales in his signature style.
Centered on the eponymous Berlin nightclub, this documentary explores the lives of LGBTQ+ people during the interwar years, from the roaring 1920s through the rise of the Nazis and into the horrors of World War II. With a blend of archival footage, recreations, and first-person accounts, director Benjamin Cantu paints a picture of gleeful decadence, the Eldorado as an almost hallowed ground where performers and patrons alike experimented with gender expression and were free to openly display their sexuality. It's an ode to what was lost, but with an eye on the bizarre contradictions of the age, where openly gay club-goers would wear their own Nazi uniforms as the years went by. Everything the Nazis Hate is emotionally challenging viewing in places, but it serves up an important slice of queer history that many will be completely unaware of.
Wu Ming-han (Greg Hsu) is not a great guy. A homophobic police officer, his life—and prejudices—are changed when he picks up an unassuming red envelope while investigating a case. Now bound under “ghost marriage” customs to Mao Mao (Austin Lin), a gay man who died under mysterious circumstances, Wu has to solve his “husband's” death before he can get on with his life. Directed by Cheng Wei-hao, better known for his thrillers and horror movies, Marry My Dead Body sees the Taiwanese director bring his supernatural stylings to this ghostly absurdist comedy for a film that transcends borders.
Cherry struggles with speaking to other people, preferring to share his feelings through haiku. Smile is a vlogger who always wears a mask, afraid to reveal her braces to the world. Both young people are terrible at communicating, until a chaotic meeting at a mall draws them together, and they begin to bring each other out of their shells. This feature directorial debut from Kyōhei Ishiguro (Your Lie in April) is a charming slice-of-life romcom that transcends its teen romance trappings. Its gorgeous animation, stunning color palette, and eye-catching pop art aesthetic are further bolstered by a genius soundtrack that blends Cherry’s haiku with hip hop influences. True to its title, Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is an effervescent, joyful affair that will bring a smile to the face of even the most jaded viewer.
How much does Akira Tendo (Eiji Akaso) hate his soul-crushing, meaningless, abusive office job? Put it this way: He considers the zombie apocalypse an improvement. Freed from the shackles of workaday monotony, Akira and a handful of fellow survivors are now free to do everything they ever wanted—so long as they can avoid becoming undead flesh-eaters themselves. Adapted from the manga by Haro Aso (creator of Alice in Borderland) and Kotaro Takata, this raucous zom-com is packed with gloriously stupid moments—zombie shark fight!—but with a central theme of learning how to truly live for yourself, it has plenty of heart too.
Drug dealer Fontaine (John Boyega) got shot to death last night. So why has he just woken up in bed as if nothing happened? That existential question leads Fontaine and two unlikely allies—prostitute Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris) and pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx)—to uncovering a vast conspiracy centered on a Black-majority town called The Glen, where people are kept mollified by hypnotic rap music, dumbed down with drug-laced fried chicken and grape juice, and preached into obedience at church. But who’s using the town as a petri dish, and why is there a cloning lab buried underground? This lethally sharp satire from writer and debut director Juel Taylor masterfully blends genres, from the use of visual motifs and dated clichés from 1970s Blaxploitation cinema to its frequent steps into sci-fi territory and laugh-out-loud comedy. But it’s the powerhouse performances from its central cast that mark this as one to watch.
Shapeshifter Nimona can become anything she wants, a gift that causes people to fear and shun her. If society is going to treat her like a villain, she's going to be one, so she decides to become the sidekick of the hated black knight, Ballister Blackheart. Unfortunately for the aspiring menace, Blackheart isn't quite the monster he's made out to be, and he instead tries to rein in Nimona's more murderous tendencies as he seeks to clear his name of a crime he didn't commit—and face down his old friend Ambrosius Goldenloin in the process. Adapted from N. D. Stevenson's groundbreaking graphic novel, Nimona is more than just another fanciful fantasy—it's a tale of outsiders and exiles, people trying to do right even when their community rejects them, and the joy of finding their own little band along the way. After an almost decade-long journey to the screen, this dazzlingly animated movie has become an instant classic.
Set in New York City in 1968, The Boys in the Band is a snapshot of gay life a year before Stonewall brought LGBTQ+ rights to mainstream attention. When Michael (Jim Parsons, fresh from The Big Bang Theory) hosts a birthday party for his best frenemy Harold (Zachary Quinto), he’s expecting a night of drinks, dancing, and gossip with their inner circle—until Alan, Michael’s straight friend from college, turns up, desperate to share something. As the night wears on, personalities clash, tempers fray, and secrets threaten to come to the surface in director Joe Mantello’s tense character study. Adapted for the screen by Mart Crowley, author of the original stage play, this period piece manages to be as poignant an exploration of queer relationships and identities as ever.
In a world already ravaged by a zombie-like plague, Andy Rose (Martin Freeman) only wants to keep his family safe, sticking to Australia’s rural back roads to avoid infection. After his wife is tragically bitten, and infects him in turn, Andy is desperate to find a safe haven for his infant daughter, Rosie. With a mere 48 hours until he succumbs himself, Andy finds an ally in Thoomi (Simone Landers), an Aboriginal girl looking to protect her own rabid father. But with threats from paranoid survivalists and Aboriginal communities hunting the infected, it may already be too late. A unique twist on the zombie apocalypse, Cargo abandons the familiar urban landscapes of the genre for the breathtaking wilds of Australia and offers a slower, character-led approach to the end of the world.
The modern master of the macabre brings the wooden would-be boy to life like never before in this exquisitely animated take on Pinocchio. In a stop-motion masterpiece that hews closer to the original 1880s tale by Carlo Collodi than the sanitized Disney version, Guillermo del Toro adds his own signature touch and compelling twists to the classic story that make it darkly enchanting—expect a Blue Fairy closer to a biblically accurate many-eyed angel and a Terrible Dogfish more like a kaiju. It’s the decision to transplant the tale to World War II that’s most affecting though. Cast against the rise of fascism, with Gepetto mourning the loss of his son, the film is packed with complex themes of mortality and morality that will haunt audiences long after the credits roll. If that doesn't sell you, perhaps the fact that it won Best Animated Feature at the 2023 Academy Awards will.
An idyllic slice-of-life movie with a twist, Call Me Chihiro follows a former sex worker—the eponymous Chihiro, played by Kasumi Arimura—after she moves to a seaside town to work in a bento restaurant. This isn’t a tale of a woman on the run or trying to escape her past—Chihiro is refreshingly forthright and unapologetic, and her warmth and openness soon begin to change the lives of her neighbors. Directed by Rikiya Imaizumi, this is an intimate, heartfelt character drama that alternates between moments of aching loneliness and sheer joy, packed with emotional beats that remind viewers of the importance of even the smallest connections.
It's easy to imagine that the elevator pitch for The Sea Beast was “Moby Dick meets How to Train Your Dragon”—and who wouldn’t be compelled by that? Set in a fantasy world where oceanic leviathans terrorize humanity, those who hunt down the giant monsters are lauded as heroes. Jacob Holland (voiced by Karl Urban) is one such hero, adopted son of the legendary Captain Crowe and well on the way to building his own legacy as a monster hunter—a journey disrupted by stowaway Maisie Brumble (Zaris-Angel Hator), who has her own ambitions to take on the sea beasts. However, after an attempt to destroy the colossal Red Bluster goes disastrously wrong, Jacob and Maisie are stranded on an island filled with the creatures, and they find that the monsters may not be quite so monstrous after all. A rollicking sea-bound adventure directed by Chris Williams—of Big Hero 6 and Moana fame—it secured its standing as one of Netflix’s finest movies with a nomination for Best Animated Feature at this year's Oscars.
Daniel Craig reprises his role as detective Benoit Blanc in this brilliant follow-up to 2019’s phenomenal whodunnit, Knives Out. Writer-director Rian Johnson crafts a fiendishly sharp new case for “the Last of the Gentlemen Sleuths,” taking Blanc to a Greek island getaway for a reclusive tech billionaire and his collection of friends and hangers-on, where a planned murder mystery weekend takes a deadly turn. While totally accessible for newcomers, fans of the first film will also be rewarded with some deeper character development for Blanc, a role that’s shaping up to be as iconic for Craig as 007. As cleverly written and meticulously constructed as its predecessor, and featuring the kind of all-star cast—Edward Norton! Janelle Monáe! Kathryn Hahn! Leslie Odom Jr.! Jessica Henwick! Madelyn Cline! Kate Hudson! Dave Bautista!—that cinema dreams are made of, Glass Onion might be the best thing Netflix has dropped all year.
Florence Pugh dazzles in this not-quite-horror film from Oscar-winning director Sebastián Lelio. Set in 1862, English nurse Lib Wright (Pugh) is sent to Ireland to observe Anna O’Donnell, a girl who claims to have not eaten in four months, subsisting instead on “manna from heaven.” Still grieving the loss of her own child, Lib is torn between investigating the medical impossibility and growing concern for Anna herself. Amid obstacles in the form of Anna’s deeply religious family and a local community that distrusts her, Lib’s watch descends into a tense, terrifying experience. Based on a book of the same name by Emma Donoghue, The Wonder is a beautiful yet bleakly shot period piece that explores the all-too-mortal horrors that unquestioning religious fervor and family secrets can wreak.
One of India’s biggest films of all time, RRR (or Rise, Roar, Revolt) redefines the notion of cinematic spectacle. Set in 1920, the historical epic follows real-life Indian revolutionaries Alluri Sitrama Raju (Ram Charan) and Komaram Bheem (N. T. Rama Rao Jr.) but fictionalizes their lives and actions. Although they come from very different walks of life, their similarities draw them together as they face down sadistic governor Scott Buxton (Ray Stevenson) and his cruel wife, Catherine (Alison Doody). No mere period fluff, RRR is a bold, exciting, and often explosive piece of filmmaking that elevates its heroes to near-mythological status. Director S. S. Rajamouli deploys brilliantly shot action scenes—and an exquisitely choreographed dance number—that grab viewers’ attention and refuse to let go. Whether you’re a longtime fan of Indian cinema or just looking for an action flick beyond the Hollywood norm, RRR is not to be missed.
An award winner at Cannes in 2019, this tale of burgeoning young love, obsession, and autonomous body parts is every bit as weird as you might expect for a French adult animated film. Director Jérémy Clapin charts the life of Naoufel, a Moroccan immigrant in modern-day France who falls for the distant Gabrielle, and Naoufel’s severed hand, which makes its way across the city to try to reconnect. With intersecting timelines and complex discussions about fate, I Lost My Body is often mind-bending yet always captivating, and Clapin employs brilliantly detailed animation and phenomenal color choices throughout. Worth watching in both the original French and the solid English dub featuring Dev Patel and Alia Shawkat, this one dares you to make sense of it all.
Aspiring filmmaker Katie Mitchell (voiced by Abbi Jacobson) has a strained relationship with her technophobic father Rick (Danny McBride)—not helped by his accidentally destroying her laptop right as she’s about to begin film school in California. In an effort to salvage their relationship, Rick decides to take the entire Mitchell family on a cross-country road trip to see Katie off. Unfortunately, this road trip coincides with a robot uprising that the Mitchells escape only by chance, leaving the fate of the world in their hands. Beautifully animated and brilliantly written, The Mitchells vs. the Machines takes a slightly more mature approach to family dynamics than many of its genre-mates, with the college-age Katie searching for her own identity while addressing genuine grievances with her father, but it effortlessly balances the more serious elements with exquisite action and genuinely funny comedy. Robbed of a full cinematic release by Covid-19, it now shines as one of Netflix’s best films.
Frustrated by the world’s collective inaction on existential threats like climate change? Maybe don’t watch Don’t Look Up, director Adam McKay’s satirical black comedy. When two low-level astronomers discover a planet-killing comet on a collision course with Earth, they try to warn the authorities—only to be met with a collective “meh.” Matters only get worse when they attempt to leak the news themselves and have to navigate vapid TV hosts, celebrities looking for a signature cause, and an indifferent public. A bleakly funny indictment of our times, bolstered by a star-studded cast fronted by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, Don’t Look Up is, somewhat depressingly, one of the best portraits of humanity since Idiocracy.
Nobody Wants This, Heartstopper, and Ranma ½ are just a few of the shows you need to watch on Netflix this month.
Still from Ranma1/2.Courtesy of Netflix
Streaming services are known for having award-worthy series but also plenty of duds. Our guide to the best TV shows on Netflix is updated weekly to help you know which series you should move to the top of your queue. They aren’t all sure-fire winners—we love a good less-than-obvious gem—but they’re all worth your time, trust us.
Feel like you’ve already watched everything on this list that you want to see? Try our guide to the best movies on Netflix for more options. And if you’ve already completed Netflix and are in need of a new challenge, check out our picks for the best shows on Hulu and the best shows on Disney+. Don’t like our picks or want to offer suggestions of your own? Head to the comments below.
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One of Western anime fandom’s gateway drugs gets a 21st century makeover with a gorgeously animated remake of Rumiko Takahashi's legendary manga. Wisely keeping the original 1980s setting, this martial-arts-infused romantic comedy follows Ranma Saotome and Akane Tendo, each the heir to their family’s dojo, as they’re reluctantly promised to each other in marriage. The only problem? They can't stand each other. Well, maybe not the only problem—after falling into a cursed spring while training in China, Ranma also transforms into a girl whenever he's splashed with water, while his father turns into a panda, and archrival Ryoga shifts into an adorable piglet! Takahashi’s comedic genius remains timeless—a panda and a schoolgirl brawling through the streets of Tokyo is gloriously farcical—while production studio MAPPA (Chainsaw Man) impresses with slick animation that more accurately re-creates Takahashi's comic style.
This miniseries from Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan isn't just an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's title work, but rather several of the master of macabre's pieces, brilliantly woven into a tapestry of terror. Like the title's source, this eight-episode event hangs on twin siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher, here reimagined as the rulers of a shady pharmaceutical empire, now with a sprawling family of descendants and squabbling heirs. The fun twist for Poe fans is that each member of the Usher clan is adapted from characters found in Poe's other works, including The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Masque of the Red Death, and, of course, The Raven, as they start falling victim to a variety of unsettling deaths, leaving the family founders to watch in despair as their empire crumbles. It's not just for grown-up goths or erudite emos though—everyone will get a creepy kick out of this delectably gothic twist on Succession. Perfect Halloween viewing.
Stop us if you've heard this one before: An agnostic sex podcaster and a Rabbi walk into a party … OK, it's not quite a setup for a joke, but rather for a sharp romcom—one based, in exaggerated form, on creator Erin Foster's own experiences. Joanne (Kristen Bell, The Good Place) is cynical and burned out on modern dating, even as it provides her material for the increasingly successful podcast she hosts with her sister Morgan (Justine Lupe). When she meets young, handsome Noah (Adam Brody, The OC), the attraction is instant and mutual—except he's just broken up with the stereotypical Nice Jewish Girl™ his family expected him to settle down with. Yet as the pair swirl through each other's lives, the show proves it's less about culture clash than it is exploring what the seemingly mismatched pair are willing to change and sacrifice to make their burgeoning relationship work. With sizzling chemistry between its leads, Nobody Wants This is a romcom with an emphasis on the romance.
One of the most joyful shows on Netflix returns for another school year of teen drama and heartfelt queer romance. In the long-awaited third season, things heat up between the central couple, with Charlie (Joe Locke) preparing to say three little words to Nick (Kit Connor) for the first time, while Elle (Yasmin Finney) and Tao (William Gao) try to have the perfect romantic summer before Elle starts art college. Heartstopper's return also sheds some of its earlier cloying tendencies, growing up alongside its talented young cast and giving them more serious material to work with, tackling more mature themes of sex, eating disorders, and gender dysphoria—all without losing the warmth and charm that made audiences fall in love with the show in the first place. The show younger LGBTQ+ viewers need now, older ones needed years ago, and one that everyone needs to watch, whatever their sexuality.
Watch the above trailer for Terminator Zero and you might think it's merely an animated repeat of the highlights from James Cameron's first two Terminator films—and to an extent, you'd be right. But look beyond the familiar imagery of cyborg cops hunting down innocent humans and plucky resistance fighters pushing back against AI-driven extinction, and you'll find one of the sharpest entries in the Terminator franchise in years. The first half of this eight-episode series treads that familiar ground, with computer engineer Malcolm Lee (voiced by André Holland, English language; Yuuya Uchida, Japanese) and his children in 1997 Tokyo targeted by Skynet's murder-bots from the future for his work developing Kokoro (Rosario Dawson/Atsumi Tanezaki), an intelligence system to rival Skynet, which he somehow knows is set to bring about Judgment Day. With only human resistance soldier Eiko (Sonoya Mizuno/Toa Yukinari) able to protect them, there's plenty of the kinetic, visceral action that Terminator is known for. The back half, though, brings considerably more depth, tapping into the often overlooked hard sci-fi elements of the universe, exploring time travel and paradoxes alongside existentialist discussions on the nature of consciousness. The best balance of brains and brawn since Terminator II.
Stalking is no laughing matter, which makes this dramatized—and highly controversial—retelling of Scottish comedian Richard Gadd's own real-life experiences more than a little uncomfortable. Adapted from Gadd's one-man stage show of the same name, Baby Reindeer follows Donny (Gadd, playing a fictionalized version of himself) after he meets Martha (Jessica Gunning) at the pub he works at. Despite claiming to be a lawyer, Martha can't afford a drink—and a sympathetic gesture on Donny's part opens the door to increasingly obsessive and dangerous behavior as she proceeds to infiltrate his life. It's shockingly honest and self-aware in places—does Donny, and by extension Gadd, on some level relish the attention of his stalker? Are his occasional moments of kindness and warmth toward Martha inviting her further in? Is he using her, finding her a strange source of material for his stand-up career? A fiercely paced seven episodes, shot more like a horror movie, this Emmy-winning miniseries explores trauma and intimacy, shame and masculinity, and how society often silences the victims of abuse.
A modern twist on Greek mythology from creator Charlie Covell (The End of the F**king World, also worth your time on Netflix), Kaos sees Jeff Goldblum in impeccable form as Zeus, the irascible and mercurial king of the gods, reacting with calm and reason as humanity begins to dabble in blasphemy. Just kidding, he plans to wipe us out. While Covell brilliantly reimagines the Greek pantheon in the image of the disaffected wealthy families we’re more accustomed to seeing on vapid reality TV, the real genius is in weaving together countless figures and fables—including Billie Piper (Doctor Who) as tortured seer Cassandra, Aurora Perrineau and Killian Scott as Eurydice and Orpheus, Nabhaan Rizwan as chaotic party god Dionysus, and a brilliantly icy Janet McTeer as Hera, queen of the gods—into a sprawling tapestry that’s as darkly comedic as it is apocalyptically thought provoking.
This self-contained event miniseries headlines Nicole Kidman as Greer Garrison Winbury, frosty matriarch of an ultra-wealthy Nantucket family. A famous author, Greer is showing her disdain for her son’s bride-to-be in the WASPiest way possible—throwing them the most lavish wedding possible, all while sniping at everyone involved. But when a dead body is found, the Winbury’s long-buried secrets start flooding out. Part glossy soap, part murder mystery, this adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s novel of the same name shines by not taking itself too seriously—colorful dance numbers, bitingly funny dialog, and an edge of satire keep things lively, even at its darker moments. While the whole cast is a delight (including Liev Schreiber as Greer’s pet husband Tag and Eve Hewson as bride Amelia, with ever-decreasing patience for the rich-folk nonsense she’s caught up in), the real standout is Donna Lynne Champlin (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) as Detective Nikki Henry, investigating the case while providing a master class in how to just about hide withering disdain as she sizes up her self-absorbed suspects. Pulpy, campy, addictive viewing.
"Anyone can fall in love with anyone" is the opening narration to The Boyfriend, Japan's first same-sex dating show—a bold and progressive statement that reflects the shifting tide of opinion in the country. Throwing nine single men together in an idyllic beach house for a summer and charging them with running a coffee truck, the over-arching concept is to see who'll pair up, but the series is as interested in exploring the friendships that emerge between the cast as it is the romantic relationships. Unlike Western dating shows, there are no scandals, no dramatic twists, no betrayals, and the “challenges” are adorably focused on confessing feelings. The gentleness of it all adds an almost relaxing quality, with the men discussing their emotions—and the nature of being queer in Japan—earnestly. An absolutely joyful example of reality TV.
If you’re pining for more Killing Eve, then this German thriller may be the next best thing. Set in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the series follows the eponymous Kleo (Jella Haase), a Stasi assassin imprisoned by her agency on false treason charges. Released after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she seeks revenge on her former handlers—but West German detective Sven (Dimitrij Schaad), the only witness to her last kill, may have something to say about that. As dark and violent as you'd expect given the period and the themes of betrayal and vengeance, Kleo is lightened by its oft-deranged sense of humor and a charismatic lead duo who brilliantly bounce off one another—chemistry that's only heightened in the second season as Kleo's pursuit of her old allies intensifies, attracting attention from international spy agencies in the aftermath of the Cold War.
Based on the Korean webcomic by Kim Carnby and Hwang Young-chan, Sweet Home offers a very different vision of apocalyptic end times—rather than pandemics, disasters, or even zombies, this posits an end of the world brought about by people's transformation into grotesque monsters, each unique and seemingly based on their deepest desires when they were human. The first season is a masterclass in claustrophobic horror, as the residents of an isolated, run-down apartment building—chiefly suicidal teen Cha Hyun-su (Song Kang), former firefighter Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Si-young), and Pyeon Sang-wook (Lee Jin-wook), who may be a brutal gangster—battle for survival. The second and third seasons explore what remains of the wider world, delving into the true nature of both monster and man—and if there's any hope for what remains of humanity. With phenomenal effects work blending prosthetics, CGI, and even stop-motion animation for some disturbingly juddering creatures, this stands apart from the horror crowd.
Giovanni Boccaccio's 14th-century collection of tales might not sound like the best material for a TV show, but as reimagined by creator Kathleen Jordan, it's one of Netflix's most raucous comedies in years. As the Black Death ravages Europe, a group of nobles decamp to an isolated country estate, hoping to party while the world ends. Shocker: Everything goes horrifically wrong. And while there's plenty of carnage along the way, there's even more bawdy antics and awkward humor as some of the worst people in history are forced to live together. Lampooning the excesses of the rich and with a hilarious cast—including Girls' Zosia Mamet, Derry Girls' Saoirse-Monica Jackson, Arrested Development's Tony Hale, and Willow's Amar Chadha-Patel—The Decameron is a bloody good time.
Paramount+'s loss remains Netflix's gain, as the streamer's license rescue of this great Star Trek spin-off warps into its second season. After escaping a distant prison planet and becoming Starfleet cadets under the watchful eye of Star Trek Voyager's Admiral Janeway (voiced by the venerable Kate Mulgrew), the ragtag crew—led by aspiring captain Dal R'El and bolstered by astrolinguist Gwyndala, engineer Jankom Pog, energy being Zero, scientist Rok-Tahk, and indestructible, gelatinous Murf—find themselves cast through time on the most dangerous mission of their young lives. While aimed at younger audiences and intended as an intro to the wider Trek universe and its ethics, Prodigy packs in plenty for older Trekkers to appreciate, particularly with a slate of returning Star Trek legends voiced by their original actors. Prodigy is something of a sleeper hit, but one of the best Trek shows in years.
Take a large portion of Great British Bake-Off, blend with equal parts Dungeons & Dragons, add a dash of Lord of the Rings, and sauté for 25 minutes per portion—et voilà, you have a delectable serving of Delicious in Dungeon. Based on the manga by Ryōko Kui, the series follows adventuring swordsman Laios and his compatriots Marcille, an elven mage, and Chilchuk, a halfling locksmith, as they venture through a hazardous dungeon to rescue Laios' sister Falin. After finding themselves short on supplies, the party teams up with dwarven warrior (and master chef) Senshi, who provides a new way to survive the dungeon's endless threats: kill, cook, and eat every monster they encounter. A light-hearted comedy, Delicious in Dungeon lampoons the fantasy genre at every turn, while serving up delectable dishes in each episode that look so good, you'll wish they were real.
One by one, five Black Londoners awaken to strange superpowers. Struggling father Andre (Eric Kofi-Abrefa) develops superstrength, nurse Sabrina (Nadine Mills) unleashes phenomenal telekinetic might, drug dealer Rodney (Calvin Demba) races at superspeed, and wannabe gang leader Tazer (Josh Tedeku) turns invisible. But it's Michael (Tosin Cole, Doctor Who) who may be the most pivotal, realizing he can leap through time and space and learning he only has three months to save his fiancée's life. Created by Andrew “Rapman” Onwubolu, Supacell is a show about superpowers, but not necessarily superheroes, with its fantastic cast offering up a far more realistic and human exploration of now-familiar ideas than anything you'll find in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And the mystery of why—and how—only Black people seem to be gaining powers builds up to a more powerful punch than an Asgardian god of thunder. A smart, modern, and refreshing take on the genre.
After suffering an improbable and humiliating death, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) finds herself in “The Good Place,” a perfect neighborhood inhabited by the world's worthiest people. The only problem? She's not meant to be there. Desperate to not be sent to “The Bad Place,” she tries to correct her behavior in the afterlife, with the help of her assigned soulmate, philosophy professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper). A twist at the end of the first season remains one of the best ever, while the show's ability to sprinkle ethical and philosophical precepts into a sitcom format is frankly astounding. With a sensational cast rounded out by Manny Jacinto, Jameela Jamil, D'Arcy Carden, and Ted Danson, The Good Place more than earns its place in the good place of TV history.
All too often, “adult animation” means either “sex jokes and F-bombs we can't do on Cartoon Network” or “let's copy anime.” Scavengers Reign isn't either of those things—this gloriously strange hard science fiction series has a visual style drawn more from European bandes dessinées, and impresses with writing that's equal parts imaginative, impactful, and thought provoking. The 12-episode series follows the crew from interstellar cargo vessel Demeter 227, stranded on the uncharted world of Vesta with seemingly no escape. (The bizarre creatures that call the planet home may be the least of the survivors’ concerns.) Originally commissioned, then unjustly canceled, by Max, this spectacular animated show deserves your attention (especially since Netflix may extend its run if enough people watch).
Created and written by Abi Morgan (screenwriter of The Iron Lady and Suffragette), this psychological thriller follows TV puppeteer Vincent Anderson (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his wife Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann), left traumatized when their son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing. But while Detective Ledroit (McKinley Belcher III) investigates, brushing up against the darkest edges of Eric's 1980s New York setting, Vincent pursues other avenues—like bringing the giant puppet Eric, designed by Edgar, to life onscreen in order to lure his son home. The distraught actions of a desperate father? Maybe—but when Eric starts talking to Vincent, everything takes a far more surreal turn. While there are shades of the similarly imaginary-friend-tinged Happy! to Eric, this limited series leans more into themes of grief, loss, and the breakdown of relationships, material its cast almost uniformly mines to deliver star turns throughout.
Still ranking as one of Netflix’s most-watched series ever, Bridgerton is set during the Regency period in England and follows the powerful Bridgerton family as they navigate love, marriage, and scandal—with most of the latter stirred up by the gossip columns penned by the anonymous Lady Whistledown. Created for screen by Chris Van Dusen and executive produced by Shonda Rhimes, this incredibly bingeable and shockingly entertaining show is based on a series of novels by Julia Quinn, with each season focusing on a different branch of the Bridgerton tree. The third and latest season sees the spotlight fall on the long-simmering relationship between wallflower Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coughlan) and Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton), a pairing that threatens to reveal powerful secrets that have been bubbling away since the very first episode.
Some shows really make you stop and think about big, meaningful, existential questions. For example: "What is it like to live as a chicken nugget?" Adapted from a Korean webtoon by Park Ji-dok—whose other work includes a comic called Killer Farts, as a starting reference point—Chicken Nugget follows Choi Sun-man (Ryu Seung-ryong), president of technology company More Than Machines, and his eccentric intern Baek-joong (Ahn Jae-hong) as they seek a way to return Sun-man's daughter Min-ah (Kim You-jung) to human form after she's accidentally transformed into a … well, it's in the title. Look, there's no getting around how utterly weird this one is, but somehow, this incredibly surreal show somersaults over its bizarre premise to become an unexpectedly warm and endearing tale of human connection. Netflix's strangest series in years, but also oddly compelling.
When American podcaster Gilbert Power (Will Forte) and his enthusiastic assistant Emmy Sizergh (Robyn Cara) descend on the sleepy Irish town of Bodkin—reluctantly aided by investigative journalist Dove Maloney (a brilliantly acerbic Siobhán Cullen, cussing out everyone who glances her way)—he thinks he's going to crack a decades-old missing-persons cold case. What he finds is a community with absolutely zero interest in his investigation, and even less in his attempts to “connect” with his Irish roots. But before long, the villagers' quirky behavior starts to feel stereotypical, performative even—and Power realizes the cold case may not be quite so chilly. Bodkin suffers from a slow start—give it at least two episodes before writing it off as not for you—but once this darkly comedic mystery gets going, you'll likely be just as invested as in your favorite true crime podcast. (Just don't take inspiration and try sleuthing any cold cases yourself.)
In 1960s China, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, gifted scholar Wenjie Ye witnesses her physicist father being beaten to death for his research, only for her to be recruited to a secret project relying on that same knowledge. Fast-forward to the present day, and physics is broken: Particle accelerators around the world are delivering impossible data, while scientists are being plagued by countdowns only they can see. Meanwhile, strange VR headsets appear to be transporting players to an entirely different world—and humanity’s continued existence may rely on there being no “game over.” Game of Thrones’ creators D. B. Weiss and David Benioff and True Blood executive producer Alexander Woo reimagine Chinese author Cixin Liu’s acclaimed hard sci-fi trilogy of first contact and looming interplanetary conflict as a more global affair. Wildly ambitious, and boasting an international cast featuring the likes of Benedict Wong, Rosalind Chao, Eiza González, and GOT alum John Bradley, Netflix's 3 Body Problem serves up the opening salvo in a richly detailed and staggeringly complex saga.
Alien spores rain down on Earth, releasing aggressive larvae driven to burrow into other creatures' heads, devour the brain, and take control of the body. Once in possession, these parasites are indistinguishable from regular people—apart from the ability to warp the flesh and bone of their hosts' head into terrible weapons, which they use to hunt and consume humans from the shadows. Su-in Jeong (So-nee Jeon) almost became one of them, but when the parasite trying to take control of her exhausts itself saving her from a violent attacker, she’s left sharing her body with an increasingly self-aware monster. Helmed by Train to Busan director Sang-ho Yeon, this Korean drama expands the world established in Hitoshi Iwaaki's sci-horror manga Parasyte, building on its social and environmental themes even as it delivers a terrific, and often terrifying, slice of body horror.
Perhaps best known nowadays from 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon, novelist Patricia Highsmith’s inveterate criminal Tom Ripley has a longer, darker legacy in print and on the screen. For this limited series, creator Steven Zaillian goes back to Highsmith's original text, presenting Ridley (a never-more-sinister Andrew Scott of All of Us Strangers) as a down-on-his-luck con man in 1950s New York who is recruited by a wealthy shipbuilder to travel to Italy and persuade the businessman’s spoiled son Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to return home. But once in Italy, Ripley finds himself enamored with Dickie's lavish lifestyle—and will do anything to take it for himself. Shot in black and white to really sell its noir credentials, this is an instant contender for the finest interpretation of Highsmith's works to date.
Saving it from Peacock after two seasons, Netflix has gotten the band back together for this sharp comedy from creator Meredith Scardino. Twenty years after they split up, girl group Girls5Eva—Dawn (Sara Bareilles), Gloria (Paula Pell), Summer (Busy Philipps), and Wickie (Renée Elise Goldsberry)—find themselves back in demand after their one big hit is sampled by popular rapper Li'l Stinker (Jeremiah Craft). Turning their renewed popularity into an opportunity to reunite, the women try to gain the stardom, respect, and musical integrity they never had in their youth, even as life has taken them in very different directions. Poking fun at the absurdity of the late ’90s/early ’00s pop scene—and how little has changed since—and heightened by an almost surrealist edge in places, Girls5eva is a comedy that deserves its time in the spotlight.
A talented young cast bring to life the tale of Aang (Gordon Cormier), the latest in a long line of avatars who can control all four cardinal elements, but is frozen in time for a century when his world needed him most. Awakened by new friends Katara (Kiawentiio) and Sokka (Ian Ousley), he sets about continuing his training as the Avatar in an attempt to restore balance, all the while pursued by the relentless Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), heir to the imperialist Fire Nation that has conquered the word. Consider this a cautious recommendation—the original animated version, also on Netflix, remains superior—but Netflix's live action Avatar remake serves up scale and spectacle, without betraying the heart of the classic show. It's also already confirmed for two more seasons, so viewers can look forward to the complete saga without the now-familiar Netflix cancellation worries.
If you're still not sold on the live-action Avatar, this sequel to the original series is well worth your time. Set 70 years after the animated Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra explores how Aang's world has progressed after decades of relative peace. When Korra, the new Avatar, moves to Republic City to complete her training under the tutelage of Tenzin—Aang's son, now with a family of his own—she finds herself and new friends Mako and Bolin caught in the growing tensions between element benders and the Equalist movement, who claim the unpowered are an oppressed class. As the series progresses over its four seasons, The Legend of Korra proves itself a very different beast than its predecessor, exploring political themes and social prejudices in deeper—and often darker—detail, while also expanding the more fantastic elements of the universe and revealing the origins of the first Avatar. Even more brilliantly animated, and with a unique 1920s inspired aesthetic, Korra is a show that grew up alongside its audience, and is all the stronger for it.
Ever been cut off in traffic? Ever had it happen when you’re having a really bad day? Ever just wanted to take the low road, chase the person down and make them pay?! Then—after a few deep breaths—Beef is the show for you. It's a pressure valve for every petty grievance you’ve ever suffered, following rich Amy (Ali Wong) and struggling Danny (Steven Yeun) as they escalate a road rage encounter into a vengeance-fueled quest to destroy the other. Yet Beef is more than a city-wide revenge thriller—it's a biting look at how crushing modern life can be, particularly in its LA setting, where extravagant wealth brushes up against inescapable poverty and seemingly no one is truly happy. Part dramedy, part therapy, Beef is a bad example of conflict resolution but a cathartic binge watch that clearly resonates—as evidenced by its growing clutch of awards, including the Golden Globe for Best Limited Series.
Something of a sleeper hit for years—its first two seasons debuted on AT&T's now-defunct pay TV channel Audience in 2017, before its third season appeared over on Amazon—all three seasons of this bleak comedy are now available on Netflix. Ron Livingston stars as Sam Loudermilk, a vitriolic former music critic and recovering alcoholic who proves almost pathologically incapable of holding his tongue when faced with life's small frustrations—a personality type possibly ill-suited to leading others through addiction support groups. It's dark in places, and its central character is deliberately unlikeable, but smart writing and smarter performances shape this into something of an acerbic anti-Frasier.
Adapted from the beloved graphic novel series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, animated by one of the most exciting and dynamic studios in Japan, and voiced by the entire returning cast of director Edgar Wright's 2010 live-action adaption, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off would have been cult gold even if it was a straight retelling of its eponymous slacker's battles against lover Ramona Flowers' seven evil exes. Yet somehow, in a world devoid of surprises, this packs in killer twists from the very first episode, making for a show that's as fresh and exciting as ever. Saying anything else would ruin it—just watch.
Four detectives. Four time periods. Four murders? Maybe—but only one body. This time-twisting thriller—adapted from the comic of the same name by writer Si Spencer and artists Tula Lotay, Meghan Hetrick, Dean Ormston, and Phil Winslade—hops from Victorian London to a dystopian future and back again, as the same corpse is found in the same spot in each era. The only thing stranger than the impossible crime itself is the conspiracy behind it, one that spans decades, impacting and linking every figure investigating the body. A brilliantly high-concept sci-fi crime drama, Bodies is one of the best one-and-done limited series to hit Netflix in years.
Think you know Astro Boy? Think again. In 2003, Naoki Urasawa (Monster, 20th Century Boys) updated original creator Osamu Tezuka's hugely influential "The Greatest Robot on Earth" story arc for his manga Pluto, opting for a more adult approach. The focus shifts from the heroic boy robot to grizzled cybernetic detective Gesicht as he investigates a series of murders of both humans and robots, each victim left with makeshift horns crammed into their heads. Meanwhile, Atom (Astro's Japanese name) is recast as a former peace ambassador, effectively a propaganda tool rolled out at the end of the 39th Central Asian War, still dealing with trauma from the experience. This adaptation is not only a faithful recreation of Urasawa's retelling, but is stunningly animated to a standard rarely seen in Netflix's original anime productions. With eight episodes, each around an hour long, this is as prestigious as any live-action thriller the streamer has produced, and a testament to both Tezuka and Urasawa's respective geniuses.
In the 17th Century, Japan enforced its "sakoku" isolationist foreign policy, effectively closing itself off from the world. Foreigners were few and far between—so when Mizu (voiced by Maya Erskine) is born with blue eyes, nine months after her mother was assaulted by one of the four white men in the country, it marks her as an outsider, regarded as less than human. Years later, after being trained by a blind sword master and now masquerading as a man, Mizu hunts down those four men, knowing that killing them all is the only way to guarantee her vengeance. Exquisitely animated—which makes its unabashed violence all the more graphic—and with a phenomenal voice cast bolstered by the likes of George Takei, Brenda Song, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, and Kenneth Branagh, Blue Eye Samurai is one of the best adults-only animated series on Netflix.
Netflix: License one of Japan’s best SF dramas in years. Also Netflix: Do nothing, literally nothing, to promote it, not even create an English subbed trailer. Which is where WIRED comes in—Pending Train is a show you (and Netflix) shouldn’t sleep on. When a train carriage is mysteriously transported into a post-apocalyptic future, the disparate passengers’ first concern is simply survival. Between exploring their new surroundings and clashing with people from another stranded train car over scarce resources, one group—including hairdresser Naoya, firefighter Yuto, and teacher Sae—begins to realize that there may be a reason they’ve been catapulted through time: a chance to go back and avert the disaster that ruined the world. A tense, 10-episode journey, Pending Train offers a Japanese twist on Lost, but one with tighter pacing and showrunners who actually have a clue where they want the story to go.
Mark one up for persistence: After numerous anime adaptations ranging from “awful” to “not too bad,” Netflix finally strikes gold with its live-action take on the global phenomenon One Piece. Despite fans’ fears, this spectacularly captures the charm, optimism, and glorious weirdness of Eiichiro Oda’s beloved manga, manifesting a fantasy world where people brandish outlandish powers and hunt for a legendary treasure in an Age of Piracy almost verbatim from the page. The perfectly cast Iñaki Godoy stars as Monkey D. Luffy, would-be King of the Pirates, bringing an almost elastic innate physicality to the role that brilliantly matches the characters rubber-based stretching powers, while the crew Luffy gathers over this first season—including swordsmaster Roronoa Zoro (Mackenyu), navigator and skilled thief Nami (Emily Rudd), sharpshooter Usopp (Jacob Romero Gibson), and martial artist chef Sanji (Taz Skylar)—all brilliantly embody their characters. A lot could have gone wrong bringing One Piece to life, but this is a voyage well worth taking.
Based on the comic American Jesus by writer Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, Kingsman) and artist Peter Gross (Lucifer), The Chosen One follows 12-year-old Jodie (Bobby Luhnow), raised in Mexico by his mother Sarah (Dianna Agron). While the young boy would rather hang out with his friends, his life—and potentially the world—changes forever when he starts exhibiting miraculous powers, attracting dangerous attention from sinister forces. While this could have been yet another formulaic entry in Netflix's expansive library of supernatural teen dramas (the Stranger Things vibe is particularly strong), the decision to shoot on film and in a 4:3 aspect ratio make this a visual delight, unlike almost anything else on the streamer at present. There's an English dub, but stick to the original Spanish with English subs for a better viewing experience. (Confusingly, there's another show with the exact same title on Netflix, a 2019 Brazilian series following a trio of relief doctors in a village dominated by a cult leader—also worth a watch, but don't get them confused!)
Arguably the most joyful show on Netflix is back for another school year of teen drama and heartfelt romance. With Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor) now officially dating, this long-awaited second season starts off with Nick struggling to come out as bisexual—but it’s openly-gay Charlie’s parents who seem to struggle the most with their relationship. Meanwhile, Elle (Yasmin Finney) and Tao’s (William Gao) will-they-won’t-they saga continues to sizzle, and a school trip to Paris turns into a crucible for everyone’s emotions. Although it steps into slightly darker terrain this season, the brilliant adaptation of Alice Oseman’s graphic novels continues to be an utter delight—the show younger LGBTQ+ viewers need now, older ones needed years ago, and that everyone needs to watch whatever your sexuality.
To those in the northern hemisphere, this Australian supernatural drama might be one of the best kept secrets of the last decade. Centred on a small town in Victoria, an entire community is shaken when seven people rise from their graves, seemingly in perfect health but with no memory of who they are or how they died. As police sergeant James Hayes (Patrick Brammall) and local doctor Elishia McKellar (Genevieve O'Reilly) try to contain and examine “The Risen,” Hayes’ world is rocked when he learns his own late wife Kate is among them. Over the course of three seasons and 18 episodes, the reasons for the dead’s return is teased out, starting with simply “how” and “why,” but building up to something that questions the rules of reality. A fantastic ensemble cast and brilliant pacing make this a must-see.
As creator Charlie Brooker recently told WIRED, “Black Mirror wasn't meant to be ‘this is what’s going on in technology this week.’ It was always designed to be a more paranoid and weird and hopefully unique show.” And that it is, but rather than displaying what’s going on in technology as it’s happening, the show has a way of beating its viewers to the paranoid punch, addressing dystopian anxieties before they even happen. (Black Mirror was talking about AI long before your mom ever heard of ChatGPT.) There are now six seasons of Brooker's show on Netflix, and if you haven’t watched, now may be the time. How else will you know what you’ll be worried about five years from now?
Jefferson Grieff (Stanley Tucci) is a former criminology professor on death row for killing his wife, telling his story to a journalist named Beth (Lydia West). Harry Watling (David Tennant) is an unassuming English vicar, tending to his parishioners. The two men are a world apart—until a horrific misunderstanding leads to Watling trapping a friend of Beth's in his basement. As Watling's situation and mental state deteriorate, Beth turns to the killer for help finding her friend. Created and written by Stephen Moffat, this tense transatlantic thriller has just a dash of The Silence of the Lambs, and with a cast at the top of their game, it’s gripping viewing. Best of all, its tight four episodes mean you can binge it in one go.
If there's a West Wing-shaped hole in your life, look no further than The Diplomat—a tense geopolitical thriller elevated beyond the norms of the genre by a superb central performance by The Americans' Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, newly appointed US ambassador to the UK. Far from being an easy assignment in a friendly country, Kate's role coincides with an attack on a British aircraft carrier, leaving her to defuse an international crisis before it escalates into full-blown war. It's a job that might go easier if her own special relationship with husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) weren't fraying, as his resentment at being demoted leads him to interfere in her efforts. One of Netflix's biggest hits of 2023, The Diplomat has already been renewed for season two.
When slacker Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) is mysteriously transported to a deserted Tokyo, his keen gaming skills give him an edge navigating a series of lethal games that test intellect as much as physical prowess. Yet after barely scraping through several rounds, Arisu is no closer to uncovering the secrets of this strange borderland, or to finding a way home—and the stakes are about to get even higher. Not only are Arisu and his allies Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), Kuina (Aya Asahina), and Chishiya (Nijiro Murakami) faced with another gauntlet of sadistic games, but they find themselves caught between rival card suit “courts” vying for power—and not everyone can be trusted.
With its willingness to kill off main characters at a moment’s notice, the first season of this gripping adaptation of Haro Aso’s manga kept viewers on tenterhooks throughout. As the long-awaited second season leans further into its twisted Alice in Wonderland imagery, expect more shocking developments in this taut thriller.
Let's be honest: Animated series based on video games often run the gamut from cheap cash-ins to half-decent if forgettable tie-ins, inaccessible to anyone but hardcore devotees. In contrast, Arcane stands apart from the crowd by making its connections to Riot Games' League of Legends almost optional. While its central figures, orphaned sisters Vi and Jinx, are playable characters in the game, viewers don't need foreknowledge of their story to enjoy this steampunk saga of class war, civil uprising, and the people caught in between. With a gorgeous painterly art style, strong characters, and frequently shocking story beats, Arcane defies its origins to become one of the best animated series in years—and it has racked up plenty of awards, including a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, to prove it.
The Sandman is one of the most beloved comic series of the past 40 years. A dark fantasy about dreams, reality, stories, and the mercurial relationship between them, Neil Gaiman's books have endured as essential reading for goth teens and literati alike. While attempts to bring the saga of Dream of the Endless—sometimes known as Morpheus, immortal embodiment and master of the nightlands, fierce and terrible in his wrath—to the screen have been underway practically since the comic debuted in 1988, this long-in-development Netflix adaptation is worth the wait. It’s a perfect translation of the first two graphic novels in the series and follows Dream (a sombre and imposing Tom Sturridge) as he restores his power and kingdom after being held in captivity for a century by occultists who snared him instead of his sister Death (Kirby Howell-Baptiste). Fittingly, the show has a dreamlike pacing to it, blurring the lines between episodic narratives and longer arcs, and it is as likely to leave viewers crying over a gargoyle’s fate as it is to shock them with the sadistic actions of an escaped nightmare-turned-serial killer named the Corinthian (Boyd Holbrook). The Sandman’s journey to the screen might have been the stuff of restless nights, but the result is a dream you won’t want to wake up from.
Netflix's nostalgic sci-fi/horror series is back for its fourth season, set six months after the Battle of Starcourt and with its core cast separated for the first time. The Byers family and Eleven are off in California, Hopper is still (somehow) in a Russian prison, and the remaining crew are home in Hawkins, Indiana, about to face down a terrifying new threat—high school. Oh, and another incursion from the horrific Upside Down. The Duffer Brothers continue to offer up plenty of 1980s nostalgia for viewers who grew up on a diet of Spielberg, Lucas, and Craven, while upping the stakes with a significant new threat. Expect drama, scares, and—of course—plenty of Dungeons & Dragons as the cult show roars toward its fifth and final season.
In Russian Doll, Nadia has one very big problem: Time keeps breaking around her. Season one finds Nadia—played by Natasha Lyonne, who is also a cocreator on the show—dying at her own birthday party, only to wake up there over and over again, trapped in a Groundhog Day-style loop until she can unravel her personalized knot in the space-time continuum. Things only get stranger in season two, where Nadia finds herself traveling back in time to 1982 and inhabiting the body of her own mother—currently heavily pregnant with Nadia herself. Both seasons are funny and thought-provoking, reflecting on personal and generational trauma, all without overegging the potential for philosophical musing.
Produced in Korea, Squid Game blends Hunger Games and Parasite with a battle-royal-style contest. Hundreds of desperate, broke people are recruited to a contest where they can win enough money to never need to worry about their debts again. All they have to do to win the ₩45.6 billion ($35.8 million) jackpot is complete six children’s games. But it’s not that simple: All the games have a twist, and very few people make it out alive. Squid Game is intense, brutal, and often very graphic, but it is also completely gripping. Netflix’s dubbing isn’t the best in this instance, but the nine episodes are compelling enough to make up for it.
Arsène Lupin, the belle epoque burglar created by French novelist Maurice Leblanc in the early 1900s, is reinvented as Assane Diop, a first-generation Frenchman with a mania for Lupin books and a grudge against the powerful forces who decades ago framed his father for a theft he didn’t commit—and led him to die in prison. Pairing drones, social media bots, and hacking skills with traditional tools of the trade like fake beards, picklocks, and quick wits, Diop hunts down his adversaries as he searches for the truth about his father’s fate. In his spare time, Diop also tries to patch together a crumbling marriage and build a better rapport with his son. Worth watching in the French original, this five-episode series’ strength lies in the dialog, the character development, and the charismatic performance of Omar Sy as Assane. The actual escapades and daring heists are beautifully choreographed, but a lot of the mechanics—how a certain piece of legerdemain worked, when an impenetrable building was infiltrated—are left to the viewer's imagination.
California Is Flooding School Cafeterias With Vegan Meals—and Kids Like It
Credit environmentally conscious students—and a handful of state funding programs.
Photograph: Genaro Molina/Getty Images
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.”
The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice.
“We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”
Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened—and it’s happening in different forms across California.
Students participate in an annual food-testing event for the Los Angeles Unified School District, with a menu that included vegan chickpea masala.
A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site.
Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming.
The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian—and to a lesser degree, vegan—lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City.
But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years—this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half—56 percent—of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the past five years.
A view of the greenhouse used for a Los Angeles magnet school’s after-school program focused on climate knowledge.
Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”
Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers—79 percent—say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.
Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the past five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.
Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart.
In their climate-focused after-school program, students learn about farm-to-table cooking, composting, greenhouse sciences, and more.
Photograph: Allen J. Schaben/Getty Images
Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources—and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them.
In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking”—essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients—into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture.
Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program—which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years—has driven new recipe development and testing.
All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024–2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.”
One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one—one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited.
“That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”
Plus: The alleged SEC X account hacker gets charged, Kroger wriggles out of a face recognition scandal, and Microsoft deals with missing customer security logs.
Security News This Week: Google Chrome’s uBlock Origin Purge Has Begun
Plus: The alleged SEC X account hacker gets charged, Kroger wriggles out of a face-recognition scandal, and Microsoft deals with missing customer security logs.
Photograph: Picture Alliance; Getty Images
In what may be a first, the US Department of Justice this week charged a hacker with attempting to cause injury and death by launching distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against hospitals. Ahmed Omer and his brother Alaa are accused of carrying out a cyberattack spree that targeted hundreds of victims under the hacktivist banner Anonymous Sudan. The group’s DDoS victims included Microsoft’s Azure cloud services, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Israel’s missile alert system, according to prosecutors. It was the brothers’ alleged attacks on hospitals, however, that drew the most serious accusations from the Justice Department, which singled out Ahmed for allegedly seeking to kill people with the crude cyberattacks that overwhelm systems, knocking them offline.
If someone told you there’s a tool that can—using only open source information—create a “cyber profile” of you that can locate your phone in real time or place you at the scene of a crime at any date in the past, would you believe them? Canadian firm Global Intelligence claims to have created such a tool, dubbed Cybercheck, which it has sold to police departments across the US. Cybercheck-generated reports have been used to help convict at least two people of murder. However, a WIRED investigation found that Cybercheck’s reports have produced information that is either inaccurate or impossible to verify. And open source experts say some of the information Cybercheck claims to include—such as a device’s pings to a specific wireless network—would be impossible to obtain from publicly available sources.
The scourge of nonconsensual deepfake images has continued to proliferate, including on Telegram, where millions of people used “nudify” bots to “remove the clothes” of anyone—usually women and girls. A WIRED investigation identified 50 such bots and 25 channels linked to the creation of these abusive AI-generated explicit images. Telegram removed all 75 channels and bots after WIRED reached out, but many of them will likely respawn.
The slow death of the password may have gotten a speed boost this week. The FIDO Alliance, a tech industry association, announced new efforts to help hasten the adoption of passkeys, the cryptographically generated codes that are already replacing less-secure passwords. These efforts include a new Credential Exchange Protocol, which makes it easier to migrate passkeys between platforms and devices, and Passkey Central, a resource for company IT departments that aims to make it easier for organizations to adopt passkeys.
Finally, we went back in time to explore how well the US Army’s “solider of tomorrow,” unveiled 65 years ago this week, predicted the future of US military tech.
And that’s not all. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.
If you use uBlock Origin’s Chrome extension to filter out online ads, expect to get mildly annoyed in the near future. Google has begun implementing new Chrome extension standards, called Manifest V3, that will disable the legacy version of uBlock Origin’s extension that most users likely have installed. And while you might be thinking, “Google is a silverback gorilla of online advertising, of course they’re finally forcing me to see ads!” there is some good news. A new version of the ad-filtering extension that meets the Manifest V3 standards, uBlock Origin Lite, is now available. Then again, it won’t block as much as the previous iteration of uBlock. Still, as a Google spokesperson told The Verge, you have options: “The top content filtering extensions all have Manifest V3 versions available — with options for users of AdBlock, Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin and AdGuard.” Either way, you’ll need to install a new extension soon.
US authorities announced charges this week against a 25-year-old Alabama man accused of hacking the Security and Exchange Commission’s X account. Prosecutors claim Eric Council Jr. obtained personal information and the materials for a fake ID of a person who controlled the @SECGov account from unidentified coconspirators. Council allegedly used the fake ID to carry out a SIM-swapping attack, duping AT&T retail store staff into giving him a new SIM card, which he ultimately used to take control of the victim’s phone account. The coconspirators used that to gain access to the SEC’s X account, where they posted a fake announcement about Bitcoin’s regulatory status, which was followed by a price jump of $1,000 per bitcoin. Council stands charged of conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.
The grocery store chain Kroger has never used facial-recognition technology broadly in its stores and has no current plans to, a spokesperson told Fast Company this week. The company has been facing a firestorm over its use of electronic shelving labels over concerns that ESLs could be used to impose surge pricing on popular items, and fears that the devices could also be deployed with facial recognition. The company did a single-store facial-recognition pilot of a technology called EDGE in 2019, but it did not move forward with the service. US lawmakers including Rashida Tlaib, Elizabeth Warren, and Robert Casey have publicly raised concerns about Kroger’s use of ESLs.
Microsoft told customers that it failed to capture more than two weeks of security logs from certain cloud services in September, including Microsoft Entra, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Purview. News of the lost logs was first reported by Business Insider. The company said in the notification that “a bug in one of Microsoft’s internal monitoring agents resulted in a malfunction in some of the agents when uploading log data to our internal logging platform.” The blank extends from September 2 to September 19. A Microsoft executive confirmed to TechCrunch that the incident was caused by an “operational bug within our internal monitoring agent.”
System activity logs are crucial for all sorts of operations and are particularly used for security monitoring and investigations, because they can expose breaches and malicious activity. After Russian hackers breached US government networks through SolarWinds software in 2020, many agencies couldn’t detect the activity in their Microsoft Azure cloud services because they weren’t paying for Microsoft’s premium tier features, so they didn’t have adequate network activity logs. Lawmakers were outraged about the up-charge, and the Biden administration worked for more than two years to get Microsoft to make the logging services free. The company ultimately announced the change in July 2023.
Verified Walmart Promo Codes & Flash Deals for October 2024
Save up to 65% off on 1000s of flash deals and verified Walmart coupon codes for trending items ranging from the new iPhone 16 Pro to everyday household items like groceries.
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After living in big cities like San Francisco and New York, when I set foot in Wally World in the Midwest, I heard angels sing. Rows and rows of fluorescent lights highlighted any and every product needed for your house in one place. Screw the mom-and-pop bodega—I missed this level of convenience. If by chance they don’t have what you need in-store, there’s even more online, with pickup and delivery available.
Save with Hand-Picked Walmart Promo and Flash Deals
Walmart has flash deals that change weekly, with up to 65% off tech, appliances, end-of-season, and holiday items, so be sure to check often to find the best rotating deals. And if you’re like me, I’m always searching for the best tech deals without breaking the bank. Luckily, Walmart is offering up to $1,110 off the new iPhone 16 – with no Walmart coupon code needed. So whether you’re looking to purchase a new 17-piece non-stick cookware set, Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner, or this season’s latest clothing trends for men, women or children – Walmart is your one-stop shop for it all.
You can also enjoy great benefits with Walmart+, a paid membership that gives early access to promotions and events like Walmart Black Friday deals, free delivery, free shipping with no order minimum, savings on fuel, streaming with Paramount+, and more. You can pay monthly or annually, and you’ll get a free trial of Walmart+ for 30 days to try it out. Walmart+ Assist helps qualifying government aid recipients get a membership at a lower cost.
Flash Deals for Walmart Halloween & Fall Decorations
With the spooky season quickly approaching, stay ahead of the game with scary-good decorations. Fortunately, you can shop at the Halloween shop at Walmart for all the decorations, inflatables, costumes, and more for up to 25% off. Even better, you can purchase a Walmart Halloween costume for as little as $5 for select styles, find decor sets for your front lawn for as little as $2, or stock up on some sweet treats for $5. Don’t miss out on these scarily good deals, and take advantage of these limited-time Walmart sales!
Find Everything You Need (Without Breaking the Bank) at Walmart
Where else can you buy a patio furniture set, baby formula, fertilizer, fill your eyeglass prescription, get a pedicure, the new iPhone 16 Pro or maybe a Subway sandwich? Walmart is where. God bless America. Now, you can get great deals on virtually everything above the internet’s seafloor cables, including great electronics like TVs, grills, and even 3D-printed pants for up to 65% off with Walmart’s flash deals or save as much as $260 off daily rollbacks.
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Students, it’s the worst time of your life, you might as well save a little money. Just kidding, life only gets harder from here. Kidding. Again. Maybe. What is not a joke is this deal. Dell is giving students a 10% discount on things students need like Dell XPS laptops and Alienware gaming rigs. Don’t call them that when you tell your parents you need one. Just say it’s a Dell 32-inch 4K OLED Monitor, no need to say anything about gaming. It’s for your eyes, because they’re starting to bleed from all the term papers.
10% Off Dell Coupon Code for Students
Now, you do have to prove you are a student to get this deal. Just verify your .edu email address through this link and you’ll get not one, but two coupon codes. One is for 10% off Inspiron, XPS and Alienware Gaming PCs (shush, stop using that word), S Series monitors and Dell brand electronics and accessories. The second is for 5% off Latitude Laptops, OptiPlex Desktops, Precision PCs, Chromebooks, Ultrasharp Monitors, P Series Monitors, E Series Monitors, C Series Monitors, as well as third-party electronics and accessories Dell has in its store.
How to Use a Dell Coupon
Once you’ve added what you need to your your cart, navigate to the checkout page. There, you will see a field with the text “Enter Code.” Simply paste your code into this box and click “Apply.” Be sure to check for restrictions (like only select items being eligible for the discount) to guarantee you get the savings you’re after.
Top Products and Deals from Dell
Dell’s XPS laptops are perfect for students. They’re lightweight, small, and plenty speedy. They’re Windows’ rough answer to Apple’s Macbook Pro line. The XPS 14 and XPS 16 are some of our favorite laptops.
If you’re a gamer, you probably already know that Dell makes Alienware, and the Dell Alienware m16 R2 is a powerful gaming machine masquerading as your next work laptop. It’s one of our favorite dual-use gaming rigs, making it perfect for students.
When to Find the Best Dell Discounts
The 10% off coupon will work any time, but Dell will also be running sales during the Black Friday/Cyber Money shopping extravaganza. This year, Black Friday is on November 29th, but be sure to look out for deals as they usually start rolling out before the big day.
Other Ways to Save With Dell
Don’t forget that, in addition to the Dell Promo Code we’ve got for you, you can save with the Dell Rewards program, which gets up to 3% back in rewards. Dell also offers free shipping and returns and has a price matching program if you find a lower advertised price somewhere else for an equivalent Dell.
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Dyson's vacuums are top-tier for various reasons. They're powerful, easy to maneuver, bagless, lightweight, and more. But a majority of these vacs are also very expensive. If you've been waiting for one to go on sale, you're in luck. Right now (until December 31), you can get up to $220 off by using the link above. Save on cordless models on the Dyson website—a majority of which are listed as our top picks in our guide to The Best Dyson Vacuums.
How To Use This Dyson Coupon
While Dyson is known to release promo codes throughout the year, our top coupon for October 2024 doesn't require a code to unlock. All you have to do is click the coupon above and select “Visit Dyson” to snag up to $220 off. You'll then see a section titled “cordless vacuums,” which lists each model on sale, the discounted price, and how much you're saving. For the full list, click “Shop all cordless vacuum deals.” When you pick the one you want, you'll see the adjusted amount reflected in your cart at checkout once you add it.
Get a 20% Off Dyson Promo Code through Rewards
Dyson also has a Dyson Owners Rewards program, where you can save on select devices with a one-time-use 20% off promo code at checkout through its site. You'll have access to this code by registering your existing Dyson machine. The company also holds Dyson trade-in events at its demo stores where you can bring in any brand of vacuum (in any condition) to receive 20% off a future Dyson purchase.
Our Favorite Dyson Vacuums
Dyson offers tons of different cordless vacuums, so it can feel overwhelming to find the right one. As we mentioned earlier, a bunch of the cordless vacuums on sale are WIRED-approved. There's the V12 Detect Slim (8/10, WIRED Recommends) which is the best for small spaces; the Dyson V8 for those on a budget; and the Gen5Detect Absolute which is the best upgrade pick. The V7, which is also on sale, is a fine vacuum. But having launched in 2017, it's a much older model that isn't as powerful as the other options. You can read more about our experiences with each one in our Dyson buying guide.
Other Dyson Coupons & October Deals
Although any money off one of Dyson's vacuums is great, we always want to make sure you're choosing the best deal. The Dyson V15 Detect Absolute is currently at the lowest price we've seen for this model at $599 ($150 off). The Gen5 Detect Absolute, which is on sale for $750 ($200 off) is a solid deal, but we saw it dip lower to $650 back in June at third-party retailers. The same goes for the V8 Absolute. It's currently on sale for $299 ($220 off) through Dyson, which is a good deal, but we've seen it drop as low as $285 before. The Dyson Ball Animal 3 for $299 ($100 off) is also the lowest price we've ever tracked. So, if you don't want to spend more than $300 on a vacuum, there are plenty of options to get the job done.
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Samsung makes everything from gaming monitors to dishwashers. I'm always looking for a sale (I’m assuming you are, too), and I've found the best Samsung promo codes to help you save big on your most important tech purchases. At WIRED, we often review the South Korean company’s products, especially Samsung’s vast lineup of Galaxy smartphones, and I've rounded up a bunch of Samsung coupons for (virtually) every type of shopper.
Save On The Latest Tech With a Samsung Promo Code
One of the hottest Samsung promo codes is a whopping 30% discount for government employees, first responders, military personnel, and educators. Samsung also has offer programs, meaning you can combine your promo code discount with most other offers to increase discounts. Get a pal involved for more savings—when a friend uses your referral code to make a purchase at Samsung.com, they'll get 5% off their purchase (up to $250 off) and you’ll get up to $100 off per order (with the potential to save $1,000 per calendar year). My insider tip is to sign up for a Samsung Rewards account for even more perks, including exclusive Samsung coupons, flash sales, and updates on the newest Samsung products, like the QLED 8K, select refrigerators, and other home appliances.
Shop The Best Samsung Deals Today
Right now, Samsung has some of the best deals I've ever seen on their best-selling tech. You can save up to $2,800 on select OLED TVs and get up to $2,200 off on select Neo QLED 4K TVs. You can also get up to $750 in enhanced trade-in credits on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which WIRED reviews editor Julian Chokkattu rated 8/10 because of its new AI features powered by Google’s Gemini and adaptable settings.
There are a bevy of Samsung promo codes, from discounts for educators to friend referral codes, to help you save on everything from soundbars to wireless chargers to Samsung’s highly anticipated health-based wearable Galaxy Ring.
Save on a Samsung Galaxy Watch
Our team has been putting Samsung's wearables through the paces, and we're impressed by the lineup's blend of style and substance. From the trail-ready Galaxy Watch Ultra to the AI-powered Galaxy Watch7 for health nerds, Samsung's got a smartwatch to match your tech appetite and fitness ambitions. And with Samsung's current deals, you can strap one on for less than you might think.
We've tracked down some serious savings across the Galaxy Watch range. Think substantial trade-in credits and instant discounts that'll have you checking your wrist instead of your wallet. These aren't just pretty faces, either—with features like AI-powered sleep coaching, real-time heart rate zones, and body composition analysis, these watches are like having a personal health lab on your arm. Plus, seamless Galaxy ecosystem integration means you can take calls, fire off texts, and even snap photos with your smartphone camera, all from your wrist. It's the kind of futuristic tech that has us at WIRED geeking out.
Stay Up to Date On All Things Samsung at WIRED
WIRED also has guides to help determine which Galaxy S24 phone is best for you and how to set up your Samsung to ensure you’re getting the most out of your phone, as well as advice on which Galaxy S24 series accessories, like cases, chargers, and power banks, are worth the money.
Us nerds here at WIRED also follow CES (sort of the Coachella for tech nerds) for all the updates on tech (almost) no one asked for, and Samsung’s bi-annual Galaxy Unpacked event, where they show off its newest toys. We have a lot of opinions about Samsung's foldable Galaxy Z Flip6 and Z Fold6 phones.
Moldova is facing a tide of disinformation unprecedented in complexity and aggression, the head of a new center meant to combat it tells WIRED. And platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and YouTube could do more.
The Disinformation Warning Coming From the Edge of Europe
Moldova is facing a tide of disinformation unprecedented in complexity and aggression, the head of a new center meant to combat it tells WIRED. And platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Telegram, and YouTube could do more.
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES
A TikTok video of actor Brian Baumgartner, from the American version of The Office, calling for the overthrow of the president of a small European country was an early sign that this would be no ordinary election.
Late last year, Baumgartner appeared among a lineup of American celebrities addressing Maia Sandu, the current, pro-European president of Moldova and proclaiming in bad Russian: “We, Hollywood stars, support the people of Moldova in their desire to overthrow you, Sandu.” These weren’t deepfakes. Instead the videos—which researchers suggested were part of a pro-Kremlin influence operation—were commissioned on Cameo, the app that lets anyone buy personalized greetings from celebrities. Neither Cameo nor Baumgartner’s representatives replied to WIRED’s request for comment.
For years, Moldova—a country similar in size to the US state of Maryland, sandwiched between the EU and Ukraine—has complained of Russian meddling. But more recently, as this former Soviet state prepares for a pivotal presidential vote and referendum on whether to join the EU, the country has become a cautionary tale about how the world’s biggest social media platforms can be exploited to create and fund a complex disinformation operation that sows discord around some of a society’s most divisive subjects.
Since war broke out in neighboring Ukraine two years ago, bots have been scouring the Moldovan internet, searching for authentic content to boost to wide audiences, such as videos of Ukrainian-refugees behaving badly. Then ordinary Moldovans complained their Facebook feeds were being inundated with political, often anti-government ads launched by pages with Vietnamese names. A year later, researchers estimated Meta had earned at least $200,000 from a pro-Kremlin ad campaign targeting Moldova alone. Russia’s foreign ministry did not reply to WIRED’s request to comment.
“It’s unprecedented in terms of complexity,” says Ana Revenco, Moldova’s former interior minister, now in charge of the country’s new Center for Strategic Communication and Combating Disinformation. What’s happening in Moldova on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok, and YouTube, she believes, carries a warning for the rest of the world. “This shows us our collective vulnerability,” she says. “Platforms are not only active here. If [Russia] can use them here, they can use them everywhere.”
Ahead of the vote on Sunday, accounts linked to Russia have reached new levels of aggression, Revenco says. “They activate accounts that have been created long ago and have been on standby,” she explains. “They are engaging bots, and they're synchronizing posts across multiple platforms.”
The EU referendum is a pivotal moment for Moldova. On Sunday, voters will face a yes or no choice on whether their country should enshrine its intention to eventually join the EU in its constitution and allow President Sandu to seek closer ties with the bloc, a move prompted by the war in Ukraine. A yes vote “would create the legal guarantee for the country to move towards the European Union, irrespective of governments in the future,” says Iulian Groza, executive director of the Institute for European Policies and Reforms, a nonprofit that wants to accelerate Moldova’s integration into Europe.
Polls suggest 55 percent of Moldovans support joining the EU. But more than one-third of eligible voters must turn up at the polling stations for the vote to be valid. That means pro-Kremlin forces in the country are encouraging people not to vote at all on Sunday, says Groza. “Those who campaign to boycott the vote, basically campaign for the referendum not to pass.”
Revenco believes there is evidence that Russia is behind the disorientating amount of online activity. “Police investigations throughout the last two years clearly saw the connection with the organized criminal groups, including those who are on the international sanctions list,” she says. “This investigation traces their connections indeed to Russia, including the military ecosystem, banking ecosystem, and financial, including those banks that are also on the international sanctions list.”
In October, police announced the seizure of piles of cash and mobile phones they linked to organizations associated with Ilan Shor, a fugitive Moldovan oligarch, living in exile in Russia. Police said these affiliates were preparing to organize vote-buying through Telegram—an allegation Shor called an “absurd spectacle.” On Telegram, bots have been offering up to $280 to people who post on Facebook against joining the EU. “They are outsourcing disinformation,” says Victoria Olari, research assistant at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who is based in Moldova’s capital, Chișinău. “They're being paid to make posts for their friends, for their close circle of people.”
Olari described the Telegram bot as an example of how brazen Russia had become in Moldova. "This is the first time Russia is not hiding anymore; they are doing this openly,” she says. Government officials claim Russia spent around €50 million ($54.3 million) on election interference last year, with the amount expected to more than double by the end of 2024, according to Revenco.
Revenco says her team has been trying to reach out to social media platforms about the problems. “Communication is much better than, let's say, one year ago.” Yet there is still room for the platforms to do much more, she says.
The narratives she sees circulating are designed to increase anti-EU sentiment, pro-Russia sentiment, but also anti-Ukrainian sentiment, she adds. “AI is used in order to multiply the messages and reach out to a greater audience in a short time.” Revenco did not provide specific examples, but a deepfake video featuring President Sandu has been circulating on Telegram, according to think tank Watchdog MD, even as the polls suggest Sandu will be reelected this weekend.
Earlier this month, Meta said it had removed Facebook and Instagram accounts centered around a dozen fictitious, Russian-language news brands. The fake accounts behind this activity posted original content, including cartoons and criticism of President Sandu, Meta said in a statement. “The operators also posted about offering money and giveaways, including food and concert tickets, if people in Moldova would follow them on social media or make graffiti with the campaign’s brand names.” Telegram, TikTok parent Bytedance, and YouTube parent Alphabet did not respond to WIRED’s questions about the steps they’d taken to limit disinformation in Moldova ahead of the vote.
Although Telegram did remove accounts linked to Shor earlier this month, at the authorities’ request, Revenco does not seem impressed by the platforms’ efforts overall. “The fact that [disinformation] continues to be present and very creative in terms of using various capabilities of these networks once again proves that the efforts undertaken so far are not sufficient.”
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Lauren Greenfield, director of the docuseries Social Studies, says we have to have empathy for teens growing up online. “It's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.”
Social Media Swallowed Gen Z. This Film Shows Exactly How
Lauren Greenfield, director of the docuseries Social Studies, says we have to have empathy for teens growing up online. “It's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.”
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES
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Twenty years ago, MySpace and Facebook ushered in an inspired age of social media. Today, the sticky parables of online life are inescapable: Connection is a convenience as much as it is a curse. A lot’s changed since those early years. In June, the US surgeon general, Vivek H. Murthy, called for a warning label on social platforms that have played a part in the mental health crisis among young people, of which “social media has emerged as an important contributor.” Social Studies, the new FX docuseries from documentarian Lauren Greenfield, bring the unsettling effects of that crisis into startling view.
The thesis was simple. Greenfield set out to catalog the first generation for which social media was an omnipresent, preordained reality. From August 2021 to the summer of 2022, she embedded with a group of teens at several Los Angeles–area high schools for the entire school year (the majority of the students attend Palisades Charter), as they obsessed over crushes, applied to college, attended prom, and pursued their passions.
“It was an unusual documentary for me,” Greenfield, a veteran filmmaker of cultural surveys like The Queen of Versailles and Generation Wealth, says of how the series came together. “The kids were co-investigators on this journey.” Along with the 1,200 hours of principal photography Greenfield and her team captured, students were also asked to save screen recordings of their daily phone usage, which amounted to another 2,000 hours of footage. Stitched together, the documentary illuminates the tangled and unrelenting experiences of teens as they deal with body dysmorphia, bullying, social acceptance, and suicidal ideation. “That’s the part that is the most groundbreaking of this project, because we haven’t really seen that before.”
The depth of the five-episode series benefits from Greenfield’s encyclopedic approach. The result is perhaps the most accurate and comprehensive portrait of Gen Z’s relationship to social media. With the release of the final episode this week (you can stream it on Hulu), I spoke with Greenfield over Zoom about the sometimes cruel, seemingly infinite experience of being a teenager online today.
JASON PARHAM: In one episode, a student says, “I think you can’t log in to TikTok and be safe.” Having spent the previous three years fully immersed in this world, I’m curious if you think social media is bad?
LAUREN GREENFIELD: I don't think it's a binary question. I really went into this as a social experiment. This is the first generation that has never grown up without it. So even though social media has been around for a while, they are the first generation of digital natives. I thought it was the right time to look at how it was impacting childhood. It’s the biggest cultural influence of this generation’s growing up, bigger than parents, peers, or school, especially coming out of Covid, which was when we started filming. You know, I didn't go into filming with a point of view or an activist agenda, but I certainly was moved by what the teenagers said to me and what they showed in their lives, which is that it's a pretty dire situation.
Jonathan, in episode five, says it's a lifeline, but it's also a loaded gun. So I don't think it's about whether there are good things in it and bad things. We see both in the show, but we also would not let our kids be around a loaded gun. So I do think that we need to change the engineering of it so that we can keep the good and not have the bad.
I entered high school in 2000, before the social media boom, and I always joke with friends how I probably would not have survived if we had it the way kids do now.
The genie is out of the bottle. But there is regulation now to get rid of it in schools, which I think is great. We also see the problem of distraction in the show. And we see the need of this generation for person-to-person connection, which they don't have enough of. We've also seen how for people like Nina, LGBTQ+, even some of the social justice reactions that happen in the series, it has a use. It also is a means of creativity and entrepreneurship. And we see that with our characters too.
But there are also just things that make life extremely toxic for teenagers—the 24/7 comparison culture, the algorithm bringing them down harmful paths of learning. What some of the new information coming out of TikTok’s internal research shows us is that these apps are engineered and they can be engineered differently.
Have you seen the Jim Henson movie? It’s called Idea Man.
No, I haven’t.
One thing that really moved me that I thought was relevant to social media and thinking about the good and bad of it, is that Joan Ganz Cooney—the TV producer who started Sesame Street—had this idea of bringing in people who know what kids love, which was Jim Henson and the creatures, with people who know what kids need to learn and what they need. It’s that second piece that has never been relevant to tech designers and engineers who have only been designing for maximum engagement, even if it's at the expense of the health and well-being of young people. We have a mental health crisis on our hands because of it. Technology is important and important for so many reasons, but I think we have an untenable situation with the current engineering of social media.
Now having filmed the show—and I hope people get it—we have to have empathy for these teenagers. Like, it's not fair to ask them to self-regulate when the apps have been designed to be addictive.
How did you land on Los Angeles as the petri dish for this social experiment?
I've been looking at youth culture for 30 years. My first book, Fast Forward: Growing Up in the Shadow of Hollywood explored how kids were influenced by the values of fame, image, and materialism. Those themes are also really relevant in the social media age. Fame is something that is not for celebrities anymore, it's for every kid looking for likes. And likes have become a rite of passage, in terms of popularity. Image making, FaceTune, Photoshop, styling, curating your brand—all of these things that used to be the realm of celebrities are now the realm of everyday children. And a lot of times in my work, I'm trying to document the air we breathe, the popular culture that's all around us. Sometimes it's hard to see. So for me, with LA, I wanted to look at where that was the most pure and strong, rather than where it was average.
The point of view shifts between students and parents. Ivy’s mom in particular has very sharp views about trans people, vaccines, and politics. Why also include their voices in a series so acutely focused on teen life?
When I started, I didn't know I was going to include the adults, but they ended up being so important. There are a lot of loving, caring parents in the show who have no idea what's going on in the social media lives of their kids. I didn't know a lot as a parent either. I think that the show is very entertaining for teenagers, twentysomethings, and thirtysomethings. For parents, it's more of an education and I hear more of them being shocked by it. It was important to see the disconnect between this generation and their parents, how much things have changed, and how much parents don't realize what's going on.
Many of the kids started taking action into their own hands.
One of the most important things I came out of this with is, parents, teachers, and administrators are not addressing the problems. They might not even understand the problems. So we get this world of young people helping each other. We have Jonathan, Cooper, and Dominic all working at a crisis hotline doing peer counseling for kids in distress. We have Anthony who becomes a vigilante because he's so frustrated that nobody's doing anything about the racist incidents and sexual assault that he’s seeing. And we have kids also making media, like Cooper having a podcast about body image. That stuff is sprouting up because they're very alone in this.
They’re just from a different generation. My youngest, who is 20, I remember I would ask to see stuff. And this was in the earlier stages of social media. You know, I kind of demanded that he would show me. But he refused. He had a different view of everything. He felt it was his private space. We need to move off that and open up a dialog. This show, it's really meant more to open dialog rather than have solutions, even though the kids give us some solutions. But the parents are an important part of the equation.
Like Ivy’s family?
Ivy's family story was a really important social media story. It's kind of the story of the division that we're seeing in our culture now—how algorithms and silos take us into these different ways of thinking and split us apart, how they make the other the enemy. We’re seeing how terrible the disinformation problem is, how tragically it could affect all of us in this election. Their story came about very unexpectedly. But I thought it was fascinating, and getting to know all the members of that family, you can see how both parents love their kids, how both kids love their parents. I didn't want to vilify anybody. But we also see how tragic it is when ideas and algorithmic silos divide family members.
Watching the series made me wonder if these kids are doomed, in a sense, because they are so beholden to platforms like TikTok and Snap. It’s all they know. Is this a tragic story?
No, I don't think so. The hope we see in episode five and their resilience is a testament to the resilience of this generation and the way they can help us carve a path forward. If anything, the adults have been a little bit irresponsible and kind of unknowing. The tech companies have been downright irresponsible. Safeguards like we have in all other media have been missing. Not to point fingers, this is a medium that has come up very quickly—
Please point fingers.
Look, it's relatively new what we're learning. In episode five, Sydney says, “Once we knew the harm of cigarettes with lung cancer, there was change made, there was regulation. And now we know there's a connection between social media, mental health, eating disorders, and suicidal ideation.” So once this knowledge is here, we have to act. To me it's very hopeful, and I know at the end the kids are like, “What do we do? We can't live without it.” But understanding that there are actually a lot of things that can be done, between regulation, between asking tech companies to change the algorithm, and also legally if they were responsible for their publishing, like every other publisher, we might be in a different space.
The Physics Trick That Makes These New Super Cars So Insanely Fast
Zero to 60 in 1.4 seconds? By lowering air pressure under the car, automakers can dial the acceleration way up.
A Porsche 911 Carrera on the track in Tooele, Utah.Photograph: D. Lentz/Getty Images
People with fast street cars like to put them through their paces at the quarter-mile track. One way to get your quarter-mile time is to just buckle up and put the pedal to the metal. But if your car's design is suboptimal, you won't be taking home the bragging rights.
So here's this week's question: Can automotive engineers predict a car's quarter-mile time using physics? And could the physics suggest some tricks to make a car faster? Yes and yes! Let's see how.
Simple Model for an Accelerating Car
When a car launches off the start, its increase in speed is described by its acceleration (the rate of change of velocity). But according to Newton's second law, to increase velocity, you need a force pushing in the direction of travel.
We can model the motion of a car with just three forces. There's the downward-pulling gravitational force (= mass, m, times the gravitational field, g). There is also the interaction between the car and the road. It's useful to split this into two forces: One, perpendicular to the ground, is called the “normal force” (FN). It's the resistance of the ground to gravity—what keeps a car from plunging to the center of the Earth. The other force, friction (Ff), acts parallel to the ground. Here's a picture:
It's the forward-pushing frictional force that makes the car accelerate. (Yes, this is powered by the engine, but the force is exerted where the rubber hits the road.) This frictional force depends on two things: the types of surfaces interacting, captured by a friction coefficient, μ, and the normal force (FN) pushing these surfaces together. With that, we get the following maximum frictional force:
The frictional force that drives the car ahead depends on the specific materials in contact (captured by a friction coefficient, μ) and the normal force.
We can quantify this by looking up the friction coefficient (around 0.7 for tires and asphalt) and calculating the normal force. Since the car stays on the ground, the acceleration in the vertical direction is zero. This means the net force in the vertical direction must be zero. So the normal force and the gravitational force must be equal.
This gives us a value for the maximum frictional force (Ff). Since this is the only force in the horizontal direction, Newton's second law says it must equal the product of the car's mass (m) and its acceleration (a).
So if we know the mass of the car (m) and the coefficient of friction (μ), we can calculate the acceleration. This is going to be useful. First, however, there's another factor we have to look at—engine power.
Constant-Power Model
Suppose you have a nice sports car. It's red and has a nice sound system, but most importantly it's a Porsche 911 Carrera with a 379-horsepower engine. We can use this power figure to model the motion of a car on the track. Power is something everyone thinks they understand, but most people can't define it. So here you go: Power is the rate of change in energy.
A car has kinetic energy (K) by virtue of its being in motion. The amount of kinetic energy depends on the mass of the car and its velocity (v).
Let's say we have a tiny car with a power of 100 watts (1 horsepower = 735 watts). If this car starts from rest, after one second it'll have a kinetic energy of 100 joules (since 1 watt = 1 joule per second). If the car has a mass of 2 kilograms, that would give it a velocity of 10 meters per second after one second. If you double the mass (to 4 kg), it would be 7.1 meters per second.
What happens to the velocity of the 2-kg car during the next second if we assume the power is constant? It will again increase in kinetic energy by an amount of 100 joules. However, since it started at 10 m/s and this starting velocity is squared, its new velocity will be 14.1 m/s (an increase of only 4.1 m/s) at the two-second mark. And so on. With constant power, the gain in speed with each successive second gets smaller. That's how power works.
If we apply this idea to a real car (I'm sticking with the Porsche 911), we can see how long it would take to run the quarter-mile track. I'm going to convert the power to watts and the distance to meters—it's just easier that way. The Porsche's mass is 1,493 kilograms (3,291 pounds), which gives me the following plot of velocity vs. time. As you can see, at 10 seconds the 911 is going 63 m/s (140 mph).
This constant-power model looks nice. It shows that the car increases in speed but not to infinity and beyond. As it goes faster, it's acceleration (the slope of the velocity curve) decreases. Seems real.
Not so fast! There's a problem with this model: At the start of the race, the slope of the curve is essentially vertical. That means it would have an infinite acceleration. That's just not possible. Looking back at our equation for acceleration based on friction, the highest acceleration would be:
You can see that it's limited by the materials in the tires and track (captured by the frictional coefficent) and the gravitational field (so, what planet you're on). Notice that the mass has canceled out. It doesn't matter if you have a more massive vehicle. Yes, you get more friction, but it's also harder to accelerate.
Constant-Friction Model
Since constant power doesn't work, what about a constant acceleration due to the friction between the tires and road? Let's say the coefficient of friction is 0.7 (reasonable for a dry road). In that case we would get the following plot of velocity versus time for the quarter-mile run.
I've included the constant-power curve just for comparison. You can see that with this friction model, the car will just keep increasing in speed forever with the same acceleration. That doesn't seem correct either.
A Better Model of Acceleration
How about this? The car increases in velocity—however, the rate of increase (the acceleration) is the lower of the two models. So, at the beginning of the run the acceleration is limited by the friction between the tires and road. Then, when the acceleration using the constant power model is lower, we can use that method.
Before we test this out, we need some real data for comparison. Since I don't own a Porsche 911, I'm going to use the data from this MotorTrend race between a 911 and a Tesla Cybertruck. Here is a plot of the actual position of the Porsche over the quarter-mile track along with the combo power-friction model. (That's now distance on the vertical axis—a quarter-mile is just about 400 meters.)
It's not a perfect fit, but it could be. I lowered the power of the Porsche a bit in my model because not all of those 379 horses go into the kinetic energy of the car—it's not a perfectly efficient system. But still, this fairly powerful car hits a quarter-mile in 12.2 seconds with a final speed of 116.4 mph (from MotorTrend). Is it possible to get a lower time? Yes. With physics.
Cheating With Physics
The dilemma is that our car is limited by the frictional force at the start. You can raise the coefficient with drag-car tires, but you won't be driving home on those. Alternatively, you can boost the friction by increasing the mass of a car. But then you also have more mass that needs to accelerate, so you don't gain anything. The key is to increase the frictional force without increasing the mass.
Now, there are “super cars” that can do the quarter mile in a crazy 10 seconds. (The sticker prices are crazy too.) But forget that. What if I told you there's a road-legal “hypercar” that can do it in under 8 seconds? True fact. The McMurtry Spéirling clocked a time of 7.97 seconds, even on a slightly wet road. The secret? It has fans that pull air out from underneath, creating a pocket of low air pressure that sucks the car downward.
Let me just go ahead and draw a force diagram for a car with a fan.
Even though there's an extra downward pushing force (Ffan), the car stays on the ground and still has a zero acceleration in the vertical direction. In this case, Newton's second law looks like this:
With the extra downward force, the only way for the forces to add up to zero is if the normal force increases. This means the frictional force is greater, so the new acceleration is greater.
Now instead of getting a maximum acceleration of 6 to 7 meters per second squared, it's possible to get much higher values—maybe 15 or even 20 m/s2. The McMurtry Spéirling in the video went from 0 to 60 mph in … wait for it … 1.4 seconds. Just thinking about that will pin your ears back.
The fan idea isn't new. In 1978, the Brabham BT46B used it to win the Formula 1 Swedish Grand Prix, but it was quickly banned. The idea of increasing downward force lives on, however. F1 cars today channel airflow through the body in clever ways to achieve some of the same “ground effect”—justified by saying the purpose is to cool the engine.
While these airflow systems do help cool the engine, everyone knows the real purpose is to generate low pressure under the car to suction it closer to the road. In fact, the new McLaren W1 that we recently reviewed is a road car that bases its sales pitch on this. (You can buy one for $2.6 million—or you could have if you'd signed up in time. Only 399 are being made, and they're all spoken for.)
The cool part is that this higher acceleration isn't just for increasing your speed. It also allows the car to slow down faster and even make sharper turns, since these are also types of acceleration. The downward thrust can turn a fast car into a crazy-fast car—if that's what you want. For me, I'm happy as long as it's a red car and it drives.
The Apple Keyboard Is Bad. Upgrade to the Nuio Flow Instead
Upgrade your Apple MacBook setup with Nuio's new expensive, ergonomic, fully wireless split keyboard.
Photograph: Brenda Stolyar; Getty Images
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Unless you're a keyboard enthusiast or a gamer, with custom builds for specific tasks, it's highly likely you're using whatever keyboard you saw first on a shelf at Best Buy. You probably know nothing about it, other than the fact that it works and gets you through the day. But a company called Nuio, cofounded by brothers Tom and Greg Wilson, want to up the ante on ordinary keyboards, starting with the Flow Keyboard—a premium, fully wireless, ergonomic, split keyboard.
As an ergonomics accessories company, the Wilson brothers have created an entire ecosystem centered around Flow. In addition to the split keyboard, Nuio offers a whole host of high-end magnetic attachments to pair with it, including a trackpad, deskpad, adjustable stands, and wristpads. All sold separately, you can customize your setup for peak comfort. And since the entire setup is wireless, you can use it virtually anywhere—whether that's at your desk, on a flight, or even on your lap.
While the Flow Keyboard is, at its core, another split keyboard, Nuio has set out to redefine what it means to have a “standard” keyboard by customizing everything from the shape of the base to the keys themselves. I've been using it for only a week, but it's altered how I think about my own everyday keyboard. It's available for preorder directly from Nuio's site starting at $399, and will ship beginning December 1.
Compact and Clean
Nuio was founded by Tom Wilson (CEO) and Greg Wilson (CMO), brothers who both have an extensive background in the design and technology space. Tom Wilson is a former Apple exec who worked on the company's portable devices like MacBooks. Greg Wilson was formerly a designer at renowned industrial design firm Frog Design (Tom Wilson also worked there at one point) and also had his own consultancy called Wilson & Co.
As the brothers began kicking ideas around for a new company, they wanted to focus on a product that hadn't been changed in a while. With Tom's background in hardware components, they landed on the keyboard.
“We wanted to start with the keyboard simply because not only had it not changed, but it's literally been 40 years since everybody has a rectangular keyboard,” Greg Wilson explained in a virtual briefing. “With all the technology today, why are we doing it that way? It doesn't really fit anyone. It's a remnant of how typewriters were built.”
When designing the Flow keyboard, the Wilson brothers made it a point to stay away from that traditional rectangular shape. Instead, they wanted to create a keyboard that contorts to the natural way your hands rest on the keyboard, rather than the other way around. So, they opted for a 3D wave design with contoured keys that are supposed to feel like they're hugging your fingertips. Both the enclosure and keys are built from scratch and proprietary to Nuio.
But it's not the split keyboard or ergonomic design that's revelatory here—it's the attention to detail. Tom Wilson worked on devices like the 17-inch MacBook Pro and the first-generation MacBook Air during his time at Apple, so it's easy to see the tech giant's influence. Between the aluminum enclosure, the low-profile keys, the easy connectivity, and the clean build (no wires in sight!), it blends in with Apple's own peripherals and devices nicely. It's tough to look at the Flow Keyboard and not immediately think of the Magic Keyboard or a MacBook.
Photograph: Brenda Stolyar
Rather than mechanical switches (as seen on most split keyboards), the Flow keyboard comes with scissor switches for less key travel. They're backlit too, so you can type in darker environments more easily. With a wireless link between the left and right side, you don't need use any wires to connect both sides to each other. Simply pair it to your computer via Bluetooth and start typing.
On the back is a USB-C port on each side for charging and a battery status light indicator. The right side also has a three-position switch that allows you to connect up to and swap between three different devices via Bluetooth. In terms of battery life, Nuio says the keyboard can last up to two weeks with normal usage and some backlight usage. It also comes with a three-headed USB-C cable, so you can charge both sides simultaneously as needed.
Even though there are two pieces, the keyboard is compact. Both sides come in at 1.01 inches tall and a little more than 6 inches wide. So, it won't take up a lot of room on your desk. It's slightly on the heavier side though, weighing in at 1.33 pounds. I'm used to it since I use heftier mechanical keyboards regularly, but if you use a thinner keyboard, you might be surprised by the extra weight. Nuio includes a carrying case with your purchase to make it easier to travel with.
It's also available in two layouts—there's a macOS model if you're strictly a Mac user, and a dual version to switch between Mac and Windows. The latter have different shortcut keys, like a win and alt key on both sides. But both feature the same function row keys, complete with keys for Do Not Disturb, brightness, volume, playback controls, and more.
Photograph: Brenda Stolyar
This carries over to the accessories too, which are simple but elegant—all of which attach magnetically. You'll have a choice between a trackpad with mechanical click and backlight ($249); small adjustable stands to place the keyboard at a more comfortable height or slant ($59 for a single, $99 for a pair); wristpads ($99 for a pair) if you want more support under your wrists throughout the day; and a desk pad (starting at $129) that comes in both small and large sizes—the latter isn't available quite yet.
The stands click into place right under each side of the keyboard. Meanwhile, the rest of the accessories (including the keyboard) attach to the deskpad. It makes the entire setup to look super sleek and keeps your desk looking neat. But it also keeps each accessory in place without moving everything around. (The trackpad isn't available yet, so I didn't test it.)
Both the keyboard and the trackpad also come in a few different colors including Space Gray and Silver (which will match your Mac setup), along with Brown, Dark Green, Rose Gold, and Midnight Blue. The wrist pads and the desk mat, however, only come in white or black. I do wish Nuio would offer the entire setup in all the same colors. As someone who owns a bubblegum pink keyboard, I would've loved an entirely rose gold setup.
Seamless and Expensive
I did not type this entire story on the Flow keyboard. I normally use a mechanical keyboard, and if you're also switching from a mechanical to an ergonomic keyboard, there is a learning curve. This will not be an issue if you're already using a split keyboard.
As with all ergonomic keyboards, the wave design is supposed to be easier on your body. Even with a wired split keyboard, it can be easy to default to a crouched position at your desk—which can also lead to neck, back, and shoulder pain. But the Flow Keyboard gives you the freedom to place it anywhere. While I've been mainly using it at my desk, I'll sometimes place it on my lap when I'm starting to feel shoulder strain, which allows me to lean back and correct my posture.
The lack of wires also allows you to move both sides as close or far apart from one another allows me to constantly tweak it to find the most comfortable placement on my desk. I'm also a fan of the low-profile keys, which honestly feel a lot like typing on my MacBook.
The entire experience has been smooth—between the seamless connectivity, setup, and incorporating it into my workflow (albeit slowly). But it's worth noting that for the entire ecosystem, including the keyboard, stands, wrist rests, desk pad, and trackpad, you'll have to shell out a whopping $1,034. At $399, just the keyboard itself is more than two to three times the price of our other picks.
In a world where more people are working remotely, on-the-go, or from home, it's no secret that we've all raised our standards when it comes to peripherals. Rather than settling for subpar proprietary equipment, people have begun to pay more attention to aesthetic and features—especially when it comes to our keyboards.
The Nuio system feels just as expensive as it is. The fact that it's infinitely movable is great, especially when most of us spend a majority of our days in front of our screens. If you're already a wireless, split keyboard user, this is worth the upgrade. If you're not, but you're interested in its benefits, you should probably try a cheaper version to see if you like the layout first.
The entire Flow Keyboard system is currently available for preorder, but certain configurations and accessories will ship on different dates. The macOS version in Space Gray, the trackpad, and the dark accessories will begin shipping on December 1. The dual OS version, the other six colorways for the keyboard and trackpad, along with the white version of accessories, will ship on January 1.
You might not think about your monitor too much, but whether you're working or gaming in your home, that array of pixels blasting light at your face is important. A computer monitor can vastly improve your productivity if you're working off a laptop, and a dual display setup can take things further. It can also make your games or movies look much, much nicer (or much worse). The folks on the WIRED Gear team use these large external screens every day in a variety of arrangements as we write our reviews, and naturally, we decided to review them too.
What to Look for in a Monitor
Let's go over a few key points. Some of these factors may matter more for certain uses—for example, gamers generally care more about higher frame rates than office workers do—but they're all handy to know going in.
Resolution: The bigger the monitor, the more it will benefit from higher resolutions. That will allow you to have app windows that take up less space but are still legible. Most monitors today are typically 1080p, 1440p (2K), or 4K.
Refresh rate: This refers to how many times the display can refresh the picture per second, measured in hertz (or Hz). A higher refresh rate makes the action in games look smoother because you're seeing more information. For productivity, 60 Hz is more than enough, but gamers will generally want a panel that can hit 120 or 144 Hz. You'll need a powerful enough computer that can maintain a high frame rate to take advantage of these high refresh rates, and you usually have to enable this feature in your operating system's display settings.
Panel type: Monitors usually have a type of LCD (liquid-crystal display) panel. Three of the most popular options—twisted nematic (TN), vertical alignment (VA), and in-plane switching (IPS)—are all different types of LCD panels, and all use TFT (thin-film-transistor) technology too. Each is popular for different reasons: IPS for color, VA for contrast, and TN for speed with higher refresh rates and response times. IPS has become especially popular thanks to its growing refresh rate speeds. OLED (organic light-emitting diodes) panels are also gaining momentum in computer monitors. On these, each pixel lights up on and off, meaning you can get truer blacks and more vibrant colors, though often at the expense of brightness. You should think about what's most important to you (great color? thin form factor? max brightness?) to choose the best panel type for your needs.
Nvidia G-Sync/AMD FreeSync support: A gamer-specific criteria, these two features let monitors adjust their frame rates based on the games they're playing. This reduces screen tearing without affecting performance. G-Sync is made by Nvidia and FreeSync comes from AMD, and while FreeSync monitors can usually work with most modern Nvidia graphics cards, G-Sync doesn't work with AMD cards, so make sure everything you have is compatible when buying.
HDR support: This isn't crucial for productivity, but if you watch a lot of media or play games, it's nice to have. Just like on TVs, HDR dramatically expands the range of colors a screen can reproduce, leading to more vivid pictures. Content still has to support HDR, but many sources do these days so it's often worth springing for.
Port availability: A crucial but easy-to-overlook factor is what kind of ports the monitor has for connecting your devices. Most typically come with one or two HDMI inputs, and a DisplayPort input, which will cover most needs, but it's always a good idea to check what your setup needs. Check out our Best USB Hubs and Docks guide if you need to expand your computer's port options.
Built-in KVM switch: A KVM (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) switch is a device that helps you easily switch your monitor, keyboard, and mouse between two different computers or source inputs (like a gaming console). If you have one setup for both a work and personal computer, or a computer and gaming console, having a KVM switch built into the monitor means you can easily switch everything between your two devices without needing an external KVM switch.
How to Set Up Your Monitor
Once you have a monitor, you need a way to set it up on your workstation. Here are a few different accessories and options.
Stands: Most monitors come with a stand, and the flexibility of these stands can go a long way toward reducing neck strain and/or back pain. Ideal stands let you adjust the height, tilt, and rotation of a screen so you can position it exactly where you need it.
Mounting brackets: If you use monitor arms, then the type of mount the display uses is crucial. Most monitors use the VESA standard. You should check the size and type of mount on the equipment you have before buying.
Speakers: A lot of monitors come with built-in speakers, but I wouldn't put much stock into them. They usually sound poor and don't get very loud. You're much better off getting a dedicated set of speakers. Check out our Best Speakers guide.
These are the best computer monitors of the many we've tested so far. There are hundreds of different kinds of PC monitors out there, so we're continually testing and updating this guide. You'll also find monitor buying advice at the bottom that explains any jargon you might not know. Be sure to check out other home office guides, including Best WFH Gear, Best Laptops, and Best USB Hubs and Docks.
Updated October 2024: We've added three new picks to this guide.
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Photograph: Nena Farrell
My Favorite Everyday Monitor
BenQ 27-Inch IPS Monitor (GW2786TC)
If you want a solid monitor for everyday work, BenQ's GW2786TC monitor is a great choice. The 1080p IPS screen is solid for your standard emails and spreadsheets, and fine enough for some casual gaming. The monitor has a VESA mount, and it's easy to adjust and swivel to your ideal height. It can rotate vertical, too, if you're looking for a second monitor with a vertical orientation. It also has built-in speakers that are great for video calls and fine for mediocre music jamming while you work (buy almost any pair of computer speakers if you want better tunes, though).
The 27-inch size of the Philips Creator Series is on the small side for a 4K screen, and it's limited to a 60-Hz refresh rate, but it produces a crisp, vibrant picture and a quick menu of screen settings to choose the best color and brightness for your activity of choice. There's both a USB-C and HDMI input, but my favorite feature is actually the built-in KVM switch.
The KVM switch allows you to connect and easily switch between two laptops or a laptop and gaming console. The KVM switch also lets you share your other peripherals with whichever device your monitor is displaying. While one USB-C cord is all you need to both connect to a laptop and keep it powered, thanks to the 96-watt power output, the Philips Creator Series also comes with a handful of cords (an HDMI, a USB-C to USB-C with USB 3.2 Gen 2 support, a USB-C to USB-A, and a DisplayPort) to make connecting to other devices super easy.
BenQ 28.2-Inch 4K+ Programming Monitor with MoonHalo
The BenQ 4K Programming Monitor has a slightly different shape than most other monitors. It's got a 28.2-inch screen rather than the standard 27- or 32-inch sizes, because rather than your classic rectangular screen, it's almost square. The shape and design is made to be ideal for coding programs, and it has coding modes you can choose to to make the experience even better. It also has what BenQ calls the “BenQ Nano Matte Panel,” which gives the screen a matte look and minimizes reflections.
Even if you aren't a serious coder—the only thing I'm coding are my Stardew Valley mods—it's still a great, beautiful 4K monitor with vibrant colors. It also has built-in speakers that are good for video calls, and on the back it has a built-in light that BenQ calls the MoonHalo. It's a cool ambient light that's great for nighttime work without any reflections from a lamp on your screen, or if you just want a little mood lighting while you're gaming the night away.
Reviews editor Julian Chokkattu has been using this 24-inch Asus IPS monitor for years without issues, which is about the best praise you can get from a monitor at this price. The 1080-pixel resolution is well suited to the 24-inch screen size, so it looks sharp. Colors can look a bit oversaturated, but you can tweak this in the display's settings. The included tilt-adjustable stand does the job, but since it supports the VESA mounting standard, I recommend putting it on an arm mount to clear some space on your desk. It even supports AMD's FreeSync if you have an AMD graphics card on your computer, so you can take advantage of the panel's 75-Hz screen refresh rate for smooth gaming.
Samsung's Odyssey G6 (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is primarily a gaming monitor. The flat 27-inch OLED screen packs a 2,560 x 1,440 resolution, a whooping 360-Hz refresh rate, and supports AMD FreeSync Premium Pro and HDR content. It's the fastest refresh rate that reviewer Eric Ravenscraft has ever tried. Higher refresh rates are great for fast-moving objects in video games, and Eric says the Odyssey G6 makes motion insanely smooth—maybe too smooth, if you're sensitive to that.
Besides all the gaming power, it also has great color accuracy, making this beautiful screen a good choice for design work. It's also a beautiful screen to just enjoy a YouTube video on. There's also a VESA mount, and the flat screen is a nice choice for writing just as much as it is gaming. Overall, it's a great screen for a huge range of tasks.
The MSI Mag 341CQP gaming monitor (9/10, WIRED Recommends) has everything you might want in a gaming monitor for a reasonable price. The curved 34-inch monitor has a quantum dot OLED panel, giving it fantastic color accuracy, vibrance, and sharper blacks. You can find panels like these in some of our favorite TVs but it's been harder to find in desktop monitors, especially at this price point.
There's a 175-Hz refresh rate, which isn't the highest you can find, but reviewer Eric Ravenscraft says it was plenty for his needs. It's got a built-in KVM switch, too, which I'm always excited to hear, and VESA mounting capabilities. Plus, if you're worried about OLED burn-in, MSI has that covered too: It's added a feature to detect static items like task bars and logos, and intentionally dims those pixels to help keep the burn-in away.
If money is no object, this Dell Alienware ultrawide monitor will stun (9/10, WIRED Recommends). This monitor uses a quantum dot OLED panel, meaning when it lights up, you get some of the deepest blacks you'll find on a PC monitor, along with vivid colors and HDR support. This is a 34-inch ultrawide monitor, so you'll need quite a bit of room on your desk, but that means tons of space to put multiple browser windows next to each other or play games on the sprawling screen. The 175-Hz screen refresh rate will make it all feel buttery smooth, and the slight curve adds immersion. Just try to avoid using it in a bright room as the screen's auto-dimming function can wash out colors, and the black levels don't look so great in those situations.
Acer's Predator X27U isn't cheap, but it's a reasonable price for a solid all-around gaming OLED. The X27U is easy to set up and has both USB-C and HDMI inputs (and it comes with the cords too). The colors it outputs are beautiful and vibrant (it hits 99 percent of the DCI-P3 color space standard, which essentially means it can show you a lot of colors), and there are eight screen modes you can access from the monitor's menu. The HDR mode is my favorite for everyday work and simple games like Stardew Valley, while the Graphics mode is best for a detailed game like Baldur's Gate 3. There are also Action, Racing, and Sports screen modes for specific styles of games. It's a flat panel, so it's not as immersive as a curved screen, but that's not a huge surprise, since it's only 27 inches.
This one also has a built-in KVM switch, so you can connect and switch between multiple devices and use the same peripherals. It also has VESA mounting support, so you can ditch the stand to save some desk space.
Some of our favorite keyboards and mice have the “gaming” moniker attached to them, but that doesn't mean only gamers can use them. This curved gaming monitor from Dell packs a 1,440p LCD TFT display, which is about the minimum you'd want from a 27-inch screen. That makes it great for anyone looking for a higher resolution without shelling out the big bucks. The stand isn't too obtrusive here, and while you can VESA-mount it, you'll need to do some finagling, since the mounting holes are recessed.
There are gamer-friendly features, like the 165-Hz refresh rate (with AMD FreeSync support), which will make games appear more fluid and smoother on the screen, provided your computer is powerful enough to dish out the necessary frames per second. It lacks HDR support, which is a bummer, but if that's not essential for you, this is a great gaming monitor at a reasonable price. It's often available for $250 or less, so try to catch it on sale.
Smart monitors are more or less a marriage of smart TVs and traditional computer monitors. It sounds a little unnecessary, but after testing the LG MyView Smart Monitor (7/10, WIRED Recommends), I'm sold. If you love to watch shows and movies at your desk or only have room for either a monitor or a television, this is the best of both worlds. (It's still a small screen compared to a typical TV, so it's best for small spaces and only if you sit no more than 5 or 6 feet from it.) It's a 4K monitor that has both HDMI and USB-C inputs, and you can switch between the WebOS-powered interface—the same found on most LG TVs with all your favorite apps—or your PC input so you can play games or get work done. I like being able to use the remote to switch over to the TV apps when I want to watch something after work, and I also like that LG's Alexa skill lets me use voice commands to turn the MyView on and off.
The 32-inch screen is spacious—there's plenty of room to fit several browser windows and apps. It only has a 60-Hz refresh rate, which is a bit of a bummer, especially if you plan on gaming. The worst parts about this monitor are its lackluster built-in speakers and the built-in webcam that doesn't work with apps like Zoom unless you use a specific USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C cord, which LG doesn't include in the packaging.
This monitor is 15.6 inches and surprisingly light for its size. It comes with a built-in kickstand that rotates out to about 120 degrees, allowing the monitor to be laid nearly flat, and the stand holds its position extremely well. It has two USB-C ports on the back, and a handy flap guides the cable around the kickstand to avoid its getting tangled.
The OLED display is crisp and vibrant, and most importantly, it's a touchscreen, so you can interact with your apps directly. It even comes with a handy stylus for drawing directly on the screen when used with Windows devices. And while it doesn’t support touch or stylus input on macOS and iPadOS (which is a little ironic), I found it an extremely handy way to extend my iPad Pro’s display.
A portable monitor can be a great option at home if you tend to shift where you work, but if you're a hybrid worker who goes to the office every so often, it's a lightweight and affordable way to get a second screen wherever you are.
Reviews editor Julian Chokkattu likes the Arzopa G1 because it's affordable (frequently on sale) and has all the specs you want. The IPS screen delivers nice colors, the 15.6-inch size lets you comfortably fit multiple app windows, and the 144-Hz refresh rate makes it more versatile if you want to use it for some gaming. There are two USB-C ports and a mini HDMI, plus a 3.5-mm headphone jack if you don't want to use the built-in speakers. It comes with a nice folio cover that doubles as a kickstand.
If you're debating if you need a second monitor, here at WIRED we suggest trying a vertical monitor (ideally paired with an ultrawide). While nearly any monitor can be rotated 90 degrees to become your vertical companion, not all will crop everything correctly.
The LG DualUp solves this problem with a wider 16:18 aspect ratio to make that vertical arrangement work. Reviews editor Julian Chokkattu could tell the difference most when he used Gmail and no longer had his email cut off or cramped, and other websites and apps looked normal rather than stuffed onto a rotated screen. It's an investment, but the colors are great out of the box, there's an included easy-to-set-up arm mount, and there are quite a few display output options, including via USB-C.
We think the screens above are better buys, but these are three other good models that do the job just fine.
BenQ 27-Inch IPS Monitor for $130: Reviews editor Julian Chokkattu bought and paired this monitor with his MacBook and says it works well and has nice colors. The large 27-inch screen paired with the 1080-pixel resolution means things can look a little fuzzy if you sit too close to the monitor, but it's fine at normal viewing distances. It supports the VESA mounting standard.
HP VH240A 24-Inch IPS Monitor for $298: The stand on this monitor lets you rotate the screen into a portrait orientation, making it a nice hassle-free second monitor (you can VESA mount it too). Julian says he bought it for his partner in 2020 and it's been going strong ever since, with a sharp 1080-pixel resolution and slim bezels. Just don't bother with the built-in speakers, as they don't sound great (as is the case with most built-in speakers).
BenQ 27-Inch QHD HDR Monitor for $300: This is a good option for creative professionals who don't need a 4K screen, and want great color accuracy. WIRED senior editor Michael Calore says the 2K-resolution display is gorgeous, with highly accurate color reproduction.
BenQ PD3225U 4K IPS Monitor for $1,100: This 4K monitor is made for Macs with its M-book mode that instantly matches the connected Mac's colors, and has a ton of screen settings you can access with the little puck remote. It's a beautiful 32-inch screen, and adjusting it up or down or to the side feels super smooth. It's on the pricey end, though, and there are plenty of cheaper options that do a similar job.
Nena Farrell is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED, based in San Diego, California. She specializes in smart home gear, parenting, and textiles, and dabbles in a variety of other home and tech beats. Before joining WIRED, she covered smart home gear at The New York Times’ Wirecutter and... Read more
Writer and Reviewer
Eric Ravenscraft is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED and is based in Austin, Texas. He ha guided readers on how to use technology for nearly a decade for publications including Lifehacker, OneZero, and The New York Times. He also streams on Twitch for WIRED occasionally and can be... Read more
From the stylish Evercade to the old-school Sega Genesis Mini, these machines will have you bleeping, blooping, and blasting back to the good old days.
Sony's PS VR2 PC Adapter Is a Poor Apology to PlayStation Fans
A lackluster accessory that gives Sony's VR headset a new lease on life only highlights the failures of the platform.
Photograph: Amazon; Getty Images
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I held Earth in the palm of my hand. Universe Sandbox, a celestial body simulator, isn’t available on the PlayStation 5, yet I was running it inside the PlayStation VR2 with the help of the relatively new PC adapter. It was thrilling to access a whole new library for Sony’s virtual reality headset. Until it stopped working.
The PS VR2 has been struggling since its launch early last year. The hardware is impeccable—I rated it an 8/10 in my review largely due to its stellar eye-tracking and comfortable headgear—but there are fewer games than one might have hoped. Some new titles are still on the way, but there aren't many wave-making tentpoles.
The flagship launch title, Horizon Call of the Mountain, was an excellent showcase for the hardware, but it remains one of the highest-profile games on the platform in the year and a half since its debut. Most other games for the VR headset are also available for less exclusive platforms like the Meta Quest 3. A dearth of games makes the PS VR2 a hard sell when it costs $550 on top of the need to own an expensive PS5. In comes Sony's PC adapter, which lets players use the headset with a gaming PC to access a larger library of VR games, but the reality isn't quite as appealing.
Complicated Setup
The PS VR2 PC adapter costs an extra $60 on top of the $550 price of the VR headset. You still need a PlayStation 5 or, with the adapter, a gaming-capable PC to run anything on it. Worse, some of the PS VR2’s features aren’t supported on the PC, like eye tracking or HDR. Compare that to a higher-end VR headset like the Meta Quest Pro, which costs around $1,000 and doesn't rely on another device.
It doesn't help that the adapter is less straightforward than the word “adapter” might imply. The adapter connects via USB 3.0, but you’ll also need to run a separate DisplayPort cable to your computer. That’s just for the headset itself. The controllers pair via Bluetooth, and each has to be paired separately.
While setting up the controllers, it started to sink in how clunky this all was. Bluetooth pairing is, in the best of circumstances, mildly annoying, and here I was doing it twice to use something I just bought an adapter for. I also had to ensure the multiple cables I was running to my computer weren't getting in the way of the space I planned to use my headset. This might've been tolerable in 2012, but when we have good standalone headsets now, it's annoying.
All of this adds up to a tedious setup process that leaves you with a mess of cables running to the headset, and that’s before you use the software. The PS VR2 requires the SteamVR app and Sony’s own PS VR2 app for the headset to work. It took around half an hour to get the headset up and running.
In fairness, some PC-based headsets still have physical cables connected to the computer or require a bit of setup, but the appeal of the PS VR2 is that it just works when it’s connected to a PS5. Judging it as a PC headset, well, it doesn’t measure up all that well.
Disappointing Performance
A lengthy setup process would be forgivable if playing on the headset was worthwhile, but it frequently wasn’t. While looking around the virtual solar system in Universe Sandbox, the game would glitch, causing the image to jitter left and right, which was rather disorienting. I couldn’t tell if this was due to lag with the display or possibly a flaw in the motion tracking, but either way, it was difficult to focus my eyes at times.
The PC adapter also doesn’t include a Bluetooth radio to pair with the controllers, so you’ll need to rely on whatever wireless adapter is in your computer. This isn't an issue with most prebuilt gaming PCs, and most motherboards these days include a Bluetooth radio, but this still might be an issue for some. (Thankfully, you can snag cheap Bluetooth adapters.)
Since Bluetooth devices famously never have connectivity issues, the controllers worked fine. No, wait, the other thing. Every so often, I would find my virtual hands desyncing from my real ones for a second or two. Even when the controllers worked, it was clear that compatibility with PC games was a patchwork solution. At one point, Universe Sandbox instructed me to use “the touchpad” to move up and down. The PS VR2 controllers do not have touchpads. The Valve Index controllers, which the game assumes you’re using, do.
Some issues are minor and could be solved via software updates, but development on PS VR2 games on the PS5 is already slow-going, so I can't imagine there's a lot of attention around improving the experience with PCs. Reportedly, the headset didn’t sell too well to begin with, making PC usage a niche within a niche. When combined with the larger features that aren’t supported at all it makes for a clunky, patchwork experience that can’t justify its price.
Uncertain Future
The PS VR2 PC adapter feels less like expanding into a new frontier and more like a consolation prize. Horizon Call of the Mountain was a fantastic tech demo for what the headset could do, but very few games have come out that utilize the available features.
Sony’s official page highlighting the games you can play on the headset still prominently features Horizon Call of the Mountain, Gran Turismo 7, and Resident Evil 4, all of which were released in 2023. The fourth game Sony features is Beat Saber, which at this point has become the VR platform equivalent of Solitaire.
Meanwhile, games coming to the PS VR2 have seen significant delays. Hit horror PC game Phasmophobia was initially supposed to launch in August 2023, six months after the PS VR2's release. After multiple delays, it's only now releasing this Halloween.
Phasmophobia is also a useful case study of how little dedicated attention the PS VR2 itself gets. The game isn't launching for the PS VR2, it's arriving for consoles—Xbox and PlayStation. That's not to belittle the effort the developers have put into VR support. But like many games for this headset, PS VR2 games are often existing titles originally intended for a 2D screen retroactively adapted for VR use. VR-first experiences like Horizon Call of the Mountain are few and far between.
It’s certainly not on indie developers to crank out content to keep the ecosystem for Sony’s headset alive, but the lack of major game releases has a cyclical effect. Fewer games mean fewer headsets sold. Fewer headsets sold means game developers have fewer reasons to release games for the hardware. It’s a tale as old as time.
However nice it might be for modders outside the PS5 ecosystem to have an official way to connect the PS VR2 to a PC, it doesn’t make up for the platform’s shortcomings that led it to need one. The PS VR2 isn’t a good PC-based headset. Maybe it could be someday, with enough support from Sony and game developers. But right now, it’s missing important features, sits on the higher end of the price spectrum, and isn't super quick to set up. Just get a Meta Quest 3S.
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Rating:
5/10
WIRED
Fairly affordable (for hearing aids). Great streaming quality. Language translation feature is nifty.
TIRED
Yuuuge in size. Incredibly uncomfortable. Very finicky audio amplification; particularly hissy at higher volumes.
My first encounter with Elehear, an over-the-counter hearing aid brand, earlier this year was positive. The company’s Alpha Pro hearing aids are traditional behind-the-ear devices designed for users with mild hearing loss. They come with an online audiologist session to help new users get up to speed and a “remote sound” feature that lets you drop your phone in front of an audio source and have it piped directly to the hearing aids. At $459, they’re solidly priced and were good enough to earn a runner-up spot on my Best Hearing Aids guide.
Now the company is back with a follow-up: the Elehear Beyond. Outfitted with a larger operational frequency range, better noise cancelation, and a tinnitus mode, on paper the Beyond aids look like everything you get with the Alpha Pro and more. Unfortunately, as I discovered after a few weeks of testing, more doesn’t always mean better.
Photograph: Christopher Null
Let’s start with the hardware because it’s a big change, and I mean that literally. Elehear’s Alpha Pro hearing aids, weighing about 4 grams, aren’t exactly tiny, but the Beyond aids are even bigger. At 4.75 grams each, they're nearly double the weight of Jabra’s 2.56-gram Enhance Select 500 aids, though both have a traditional behind-the-ear (BTE) design. I was taken aback by the size from the moment I unboxed them, and even more so after I looked in the mirror. There’s no hiding these gargantuan teardrops—they caused my ears to visibly stick out from the side of my head.
But let’s say you're not as vain as me. What about the audio quality? Here, the Beyond aids didn’t overly impress me either. From the moment I put them on, these hearing aids exhibited a noticeable level of background noise, audible even at fairly low amplification levels. It’s better described as closer to a rattle than a hiss, a bit like an old desk fan nearby that’s grinding on bare metal as it spins.
Photograph: Christopher Null via Elehear app
Elehear doesn’t include a hearing test mode or an in-depth equalization feature but it does have copious options that can at least help you fine-tune the hiss out and the good sounds in (and, naturally, a new AI-powered algorithm that claims to “continuously learn and adapt to your unique hearing profile”).
Volume and tone (more treble versus more bass) can be adjusted per ear, and there are eight levels of noise cancellation you can cycle through. (A rocker on the back of each aid also lets you adjust the volume for each ear individually.) You can hear the noise cancellation kick in when ambient sounds start to pick up, which helps to reduce the level of hiss. Finally, the unit can be set to directionally focus on sounds straight ahead of you or 360-degree mode for all-around listening. You can save four custom user modes to try them out for different environments.
Photograph: Christopher Null
When tasked with improving the quality of my hearing, my results were mixed. The units can get loud if you crank them up—uncomfortably so—but I found it hard to dial in a balance that worked well for my generally mid-frequency hearing loss. At higher volume levels, voices felt boomy or tinny, with the occasional disconcerting echo. I was most comfortable when I set the aids at low amplification levels—around 25 percent—which dulled the more cacophonous elements of the experience while gently boosting audio levels across the board. It’s not overly the kind of hearing help I need, but your mileage may vary.
As with the Alpha Pro aids, the Beyond aids quickly switch into streaming mode when a Bluetooth audio source is playing or when you’re taking a phone call. I was surprised by the high quality of the aids in streaming media. Media mode disables all other features in the Elehear app, but both highs and lows sounded clear and vibrant, the latter a particular rarity among hearing aids. The app does include a “phone-call boost” mode that promises better clarity for phone calls. I found the improvement for incoming voices to be small, but noticeable.
Photograph: Christopher Null
The aids feature some bonus features, including a tinnitus therapy system, the same remote sound capture feature available on the Alpha Pros, and a new translation feature built into the app. This is similar to Google Translate and other one-on-one translation apps (press a button to talk and a translation appears in text and piped to the hearing aids), but it’s potentially handy to have it built into the hearing aid control app. Too bad only 10 languages are supported.
While the Beyond aids’ audio performance was hit and miss for me, they may work better for people with different types of hearing loss and the proper attention to tuning. But there’s no getting around the sheer size of these aids. They aren’t just an eyesore—they’re uncomfortable to wear even for a relatively short period, pressing on the back of the ear with a substantial amount of force. I had to take a lot of breaks when testing the Beyond aids to give the backs of my ears a rest (a first), and I never fully acclimated to them.
The company behind Trump Watches prominently features an iconic image of the presidential candidate on its timepieces. There’s one big problem: It’s not allowed to.
It Sure Looks Like Trump Watches Are Breaking Copyright Law
The company behind Trump Watches prominently features an iconic image of the presidential candidate on its timepieces. There’s one big problem: It’s not allowed to.
In late September, Donald Trump gushed on Truth Social about a just-announced business venture: “The Official Trump Watch Collection,” which, he added, would make a “great Christmas Gift.”
The pair of watches, initially named “Fight Fight Fight” and “Victory Tourbillon,” retail from between (the recently inflated) $799 and $100,000, and the timepieces were said to feature “premium, Swiss-Made materials” and include “intricate details.” However, as watch connoisseurs began to review the Trump Watches marketing materials, they were less than kind about the craftsmanship. WIRED's watch expert called them the most tragic celebrity watches yet.
But while the former president was busy hawking the timekeepers, he wouldn’t actually benefit from the sales, having negotiated a name, image, and likeness deal with a little known LLC from Wyoming. How else to explain the defiant fist-raised photo from his post-assassination-attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania—which, according to the Trump Watches marketing materials, will be etched on the back of Fight watch?
According to the Associated Press, though, TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC advertised a product it can’t deliver, as that image is owned by the 178-year-old news agency. This week, the AP told WIRED it is pursuing a cease and desist against the LLC, which is registered in Sheridan, Wyoming. (The company did not reply to a request for comment about the cease and desist letter.)
Evan Vucci, the AP’s Pulitzer Prize–winning chief photographer, took that photograph, and while he told WIRED he does not own the rights to that image, the AP confirmed earlier this month in an email to WIRED that it is filing the written notice. “AP is proud of Evan Vucci’s photo and recognizes its impact,” wrote AP spokesperson Nicole Meir. “We reserve our rights to this powerful image, as we do with all AP journalism, and continue to license it for editorial use only.”
The “Fight Fight Fight” Trump watches will supposedly feature the image of the former president post-assassination-attempt on the rear. TheBestWatchesonEarth does not have the rights to use the image.
Typically it is the celebrity who reaches out to demand their likeness be removed from a product. In 2021, the New York Times documented the litany of products, from electric razors to ponchos and even face paint, with images of B. J. Novak advertising the goods—but the actor said on social media that he was “too amused” to take any action.
Details about TheBestWatchesonEarth are scant. The company was registered in late July, roughly three months before it began to advertise the watches, and it is unclear who actually owns or is associated with the LLC.
Fortunately for the Trump watch company, the other watches in the catalog do not feature the iconic post-assassination-attempt image on the rear. Like the just announced “First Lady” piece, an exclusive watch (100 were offered for sale, limit of three per purchase) that is also now elusive—it quickly sold out. With the tagline “Buy one to wear daily … or give one to all the women in your life,” it is unlikely Melania was one of the hundred who bought one—only Trump’s signature graces the dial, and the former First Lady’s name is nowhere to be found on the marketing copy.
The new Trump “First Lady” watch: “Give one to all the women in your life.”
Courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC
There are also the 18-karat, diamond-encrusted, $100,000 flagship “Victory Tourbillon” pieces, which have clear exhibition casebacks so owners can view the “TX07 Tourbillon” automatic movement. However, finding any record of such a movement online is difficult.
Watch commentator Nico Leonard van der Horst said in an Instagram post: “The manufacturer of this movement is Olivier Mory, who ironically is known for making very affordable Tourbillons half made in China, half made in Switzerland. If you were to buy this movement and put it in your own watch, you would be able to buy it for under $3.5k.”
The 18-karat, diamond-encrusted, $100,000 flagship “Victory Tourbillon” Trump watches have clear exhibition casebacks and so do not infringe AP's image rights.
Courtesy of TheBestWatchesonEarth LLC
TheBestWatchesonEarth does have a connection to other Trump-branded products: Earlier this year, a line of Trump sneakers were introduced, and the companies behind both the sneakers and watches were registered by Andrew Pierce of Cloud Peak Law (which also is linked to another law group, Wyoming LLC Attorney).
That obfuscation is purposeful: Pierce explained on a podcast earlier this year that he specializes in this sort of anonymity, saying, “With so much information being on the internet, how can you anonymously own a website? How can you have a company that isn’t tied back to your home address? Those are things where we can help you cover your tracks a little bit and have some privacy at the end of the day.”
You Can Now See the Code That Helped End Apartheid
John Graham-Cumming, who happens to be Cloudflare's CTO, cracked a 30-year-old encrypted file that had a role in rewriting South Africa’s history.
Tim Jenkin came up with a system that helped members of the African National Congress communicate safely under apartheid.Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images
John Graham-Cumming doesn’t ping me often, but when he does I pay attention. His day job is the CTO of the security giant Cloudflare, but he is also a lay historian of technology, guided by a righteous compass. He might be best known for successfully leading a campaign to force the UK government to apologize to the legendary computer scientist Alan Turing for prosecuting him for homosexuality and essentially harassing him to death. So when he DM’d me to say that he had “a hell of a story”—promising “one-time pads! 8-bit computers! Flight attendants smuggling floppies full of random numbers into South Africa!”—I responded.
The story he shared centers around Tim Jenkin, a former anti-apartheid activist. Jenkin grew up “as a regular racist white South African,” as he described it when I contacted him. But when Jenkin traveled abroad—beyond the filters of the police-state government—he learned about the brutal oppression in his home country, and in 1974 he offered his help to the African National Congress, the banned organization trying to overthrow the white regime. He returned to South Africa and engaged as an activist, distributing pamphlets. He had always had a penchant for gadgetry and was skilled in creating “leaflet bombs”—devices placed on the street that, when triggered, shot anti-government flyers into the air to be spread by the wind. Unfortunately, he says, in 1978 “we got nicked.” Jenkin was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Jenkin has a hacker mind—even as a kid he was fiddling with gadgets, and as a teen he took apart and reassembled his motorcycle. Those skills proved his salvation. Working in the woodshop, he crafted mockups of the large keys that could unlock the prison doors. After months of surreptitious carpentry and testing, he and two colleagues walked out of the prison and eventually got to London.
It was the early 1980s, and the ANC’s efforts were flagging. The problem was communications. Activists, especially ANC leaders, were under constant surveillance by South African officials. “The decision was taken to get leadership figures back into the country to be closer to the activists, but to do that they still had to be in touch with the outside,” says Jenkin, who was given a mandate to solve the problem. Rudimentary methods—like invisible ink and sending codes by touch-tone dials—weren’t terribly effective. They wanted a communication system that was computerized and unbreakable. The plan was dubbed Operation Vula.
Working in his small council flat in the Islington neighborhood in London—nicknamed GCHQ, after the top-secret British intelligence agency—Jenkins set about learning to code. It was the early days of PCs, and the equipment by today’s standards was laughably weak. Breakthroughs in public key cryptography had come out a few years earlier, but there was no easily available implementation. And Jenkin was suspicious of prepackaged cryptosystems, fearing they might harbor back doors that would provide governments access.
Using a Toshiba T1000 PC running an early version of MS-DOS, Jenkin wrote a system using the most secure form of crypto, a one-time pad, which scrambles messages character by character using a shared key that’s as long as the message itself. Using the program, an activist could type a message on a computer and encrypt it with a floppy disk containing the one-time pad of random numbers. The activist could then convert the encrypted text into audio signals and play them to a tape recorder, which would store them. Then, using a public phone, the activist could call, say, ANC leaders in London or Lusaka, Zambia, and play the tape. The recipient would use a modem with an acoustic coupler to capture the sounds, translate them back into digital signals, and decrypt the message with Jenkin’s program.
One potential problem was getting the materials—the disks and computers—to Africa. The solution, as Graham-Cumming noted, was accomplished by enlisting a sympathetic Dutch flight attendant who routinely flew to Pretoria. “She didn't know what she was taking in, because everything was packaged up; we didn't talk about it at all,” says Jenkin. “She just volunteered to take the stuff, and she took in the laptops and acoustic modems and those sorts of things.”
Operation Vula gave the ANC the confidence to sneak some leaders back into the country to supervise anti-government actions, coordinating efforts with the top leaders abroad. The Vula coding system even made it possible for the ANC brain trust to establish contact with the incarcerated Nelson Mandela. He received local visitors who came in carrying books that hid the decrypted dispatches—another product of Jenkin’s MacGyver-esque powers. “We smuggled these specially doctored books—innocuous looking books, maybe about flowers or travel—with a secret hidden compartment in the cover,” says Jenkin. “If you knew how to do it, you could extract the message and put another one back in there.”
Jenkin’s system allowed countless messages to be sent securely, as the ANC reached closer to its goal of defeating apartheid. He is unaware of any instance where the authorities decoded a single communication. When the ANC was ultimately unbanned in 1991, it credited Operation Vula as a key factor in its victory. In April 1994, Nelson Mandela became the president of South Africa.
You might be thinking that Jenkin’s story is so amazing that someone should make a movie out of it. Someone already has—focusing on the prison break. It’s called Escape From Pretoria and stars Daniel Radcliffe as Jenkin. There’s also a short documentary about Jenkin and Operation Vula. But until this year one thing had not been documented—Jenkin’s artisanal cryptosystem.
That’s where Graham-Cumming enters the picture. Years ago, he’d heard about Operation Vula and found the story fascinating. Earlier this year, he came across a mention of it and wondered—what happened to the code? He felt it should be open-sourced and uploaded to GitHub for all to see and play with. So he contacted Jenkin—and heard a sad story.
When Jenkin returned to South Africa in 1992, he had been worried about taking his tools with him, as some elements of the operation were still ongoing. “I didn't want to just walk in with all this communication equipment and have this coding wind up in their hands, so I compressed everything into single files, zipped it with passwords, and brought in the disks like that.” He had no problem at the border. Eventually, people felt safe meeting face-to-face and no longer needed Jenkin’s system. “Then life caught up with me,” he says. “I got married, had kids and all that. And one day, I thought, 'Let me have a look at this thing again.’ And I couldn't remember the password.” Over the years, Jenkin and others tried to break the encryption, and failed.
Rather than being disappointed, Graham-Cumming was thrilled. “I’ve got to have a go at this,” he told himself, and asked for the files.
When Graham-Cumming received them on May 20, he was encouraged that they were compressed and encrypted in the old encrypted PKZIP format. It had a known flaw you could exploit if you knew some part of the original unencrypted message. But you’d have to know where in the zipped file that text is represented. He asked if Jenkin had any unencrypted versions of the code files, and indeed there were a few. But they turned out to be different from what was in the zip file, so they weren’t immediately helpful.
Graham-Cumming took a few days to think out his next attack. He realized the zip file contained another zip file, and that since all he needed was the right original text for a specific part of the scrambled text, his best chance was using the first file name mentioned in the zip within the zip. “You could predict the very first bit of that zip file using that name,” he says. “And I knew the names he was using. I was like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna try out a name,’ and I wrote a little program to try it.” (This is a much simplified explanation—Graham-Cumming provides more details in a blog post.)
On May 29, Graham-Cumming ran the program and stepped away to eat a breakfast of scrambled eggs. Twenty-three minutes later, the program finished. He’d broken the encryption and unzipped the file. The workings of Jenkin’s cryptosystem were exposed. It had been nine days since he first exchanged emails with Jenkin.
The next step was to actually run the code, which Graham-Cumming did using an emulator of the ancient version of MS-DOS used in the Toshiba T1000. It worked perfectly. Jenkin had feared that a professional coder like Graham-Cumming might find his work hopelessly amateurish, but his reaction was quite the opposite. “I’m pretty amazed, given the limitations he had in terms of knowledge, in terms of hardware, that they built something that was pretty credible, especially for the time,” says Graham-Cumming. Even more impressive: It did a job in the wild.
Jenkin, who has spent the past few decades in South Africa as a computer programmer and web designer, has now uploaded the code to GitHub and open-sourced it. He plans to unzip and upload some of the messages exchanged in the ’80s that helped bring down apartheid.
“The code itself is a historical document,” says Graham-Cumming. “It wasn't like, ‘Oh, I'm going to create some theoretical crypto system.’ It was like, ‘I’ve got real activists, real people in danger. I need real communications, and I need to be practical.’” It’s also, as he promised me, a hell of a story.
Time Travel
In November 2014, I wrote for Backchannel about Graham-Cumming’s campaign to evoke an apology from the UK for its shameful actions against Alan Turing.
On September 10, Graham-Cumming was sick with the flu. He stayed in bed most of the day. Late in the afternoon, he dragged himself to his computer to check his email. Sitting there, in rumpled gym garb, he found the following message from one Kirsty McNeill, a person he did not know. The email signature, as well as the email domain, indicated an association with 10 Downing Street.
Graham-Cumming, even in his flu-addled state, knew that this might just be some prank. It wasn’t hard to spoof an address, even from the Prime Minister’s office. He Googled the telephone number in the signature. It was the switchboard to 10 Downing Street. He dialed, asked for Ms. McNeill, and was quickly connected. “We are doing the apology tonight,” she told him. Was it all right if she read him the text? Somewhat stunned, he listened and approved.
Ten minutes later, his iPhone rang. “Hello, John, this is [Prime Minister] Gordon Brown,” came a familiar voice. “I think you know why I’m calling you.” Over the next few minutes the two chatted. Prime Minister Brown was not a politician of the oozing Tony Blair/Bill Clinton “feel your pain” school. Graham-Cumming admits to some of the same social awkwardness. So the two of them stumbled through a conversation in which Brown confessed that until the petition he had not realized the government’s role in persecuting and prosecuting one of its greatest war heroes. Within a half an hour, 10 Downing released the apology.
Ask Me One Thing
Jean-Daniel asks, “Can we train AI to spot and flag AI-generated content automatically? If so can we incorporate that as a default in search engines, phones, and PCs?”
Thanks for the question, Jean-Daniel. You clearly understand that the messages, videos, and documents that come before us may or may not be generated by algorithms and not humans. There is a natural preference to know if you are on the receiving end of something that came from a living breathing person or a soulless robot. The state-of-the-art large language models do have specific tells. (For one thing, they don’t express themselves creatively as a really smart human can.) It’s reasonable to think that an excellent AI-powered sniffer might be able to root out the fakes. But as AI gets better, identifying its output gets harder. Also, once your AI detector figures out the giveaways, those building the models would probably then share those secrets with their products, and an arms race would ensue.
Even if you did have a great way to tell what was algorithm and what was human, it would probably be a bad idea to block the AI stuff. All the companies making productivity apps are providing tools for people to use AI for communications, writing, illustrating, and even video production. You might not like AI, but if you block emails and documents that use it you’ll probably miss a lot of meetings and important information.
Instead of labeling which things are made by AI, I think it’s more practical to adopt techniques that affirm that something came from actual people. For instance, the Authors Guild (disclosure: I’m on the the council) has recently started a program where books can earn a sticker that says “Created by Humans.” Systems like this might help AI-haters like you to limit your consumption to the dwindling percentage of content that’s not output from an LLM.
You can submit questions tomail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.
Is your Apple AirTag running low on power? Here’s how to replace that battery and get back to tracking.
Photograph: Alamy
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Look, you’re probably here because you recently received an iPhone notification that the battery for your AirTag is running low. Or, maybe you purchased a refurbished version of Apple’s tracking device and want to make sure it has plenty of juice to last for a while. Either way, I’m here to assure you that replacing an AirTag battery is simple. The whole process should take only a couple of minutes.
How often do you need to replace it? After activating a brand-new AirTag, you can expect to replace that first battery in about a year. The timing of subsequent replacements really depends on the quality of the batteries you purchase, as well as how much you use the tracker. Unlike the iPhone or Apple Watch, the battery in an AirTag is not rechargeable and needs to be swapped out when it dies.
Thankfully, you don’t have to buy some special battery from Apple. Most lithium CR2032 coin batteries will work just fine. These are the same 3-volt batteries that commonly slot into wristwatches, kitchen thermometers, and other small electronics. A four-pack of the batteries costs around $6 on Amazon.
Just know that some of these CR2032 batteries have been treated with a bitter coating to discourage children from swallowing them. Not all of those bitter-tasting batteries will work with AirTags, so if yours has this coating, make sure to double-check the packaging to see if it’s compatible. The coated batteries that do work will clearly say “Compatible With Apple AirTag” on the package.
Swap It Out
Now that you have a new battery for your AirTag, removing the old battery and adding in the fresh one is simple. Follow these steps:
Flip the AirTag so the silver side with the Apple logo is facing you.
Use your fingertips to press down and rotate the silver piece about a quarter turn counterclockwise. The silver lid should disconnect and loosen.
Remove the silver piece, and now you should be able to pop out the old battery.
Place the new CR2032 battery in the empty slot, with the “+” sign facing you.
Put the silver piece back on top, press down, and rotate it clockwise until the cover locks into place.
Would you rather have a rechargeable tracker on your keyring or attached to your pet? While the AirTag is WIRED’s recommended tracker for iOS devices, the Pebblebee might be worth checking out for a tracker where you can use a USB-C cord to charge it and avoid changing those pesky little battery cells.
During an event for Tesla’s new self-driving Cybercab—due out 2027—Musk revealed an expansive vision for cities transformed by a robotaxi revolution. Experts say the plan has some hitches.
The Paradox at the Heart of Elon Musk’s Self-Driving Vision
During an event for Tesla’s new self-driving Cybercab—due out 2027—Musk revealed an expansive vision for cities transformed by a robotaxi revolution. Experts say the plan has some hitches.
At the Cybercab launch event, Telsa also debuted a prototype of a private, 20-passenger autonomous bus called the Robovan.Photo-Illustration: Wired Staff/Getty
A sleek, gold car pulls up to a bustling corner market, and a middle-aged couple alights. A woman eases a suitcase into the same vehicle’s spacious trunk. Later, a doodle and its master watch rocket videos in the front seat as the car eases around the neighborhood. No driver, no steering wheel, no pedals, no waiting, no traffic, no worries: This Tesla Cybercab drives itself.
That’s the vision shown off by Tesla CEO Elon Musk last week during a presentation broadcast from a set at Warner Bros. Studio, outside of Los Angeles. Some 20 prototypes cruised the movie lot as a series of mocked-up images showed scenes of the idyllic tomorrow these sleek people-movers could usher us into. But experts say Tesla’s brave, new city of the future will need more than a few robotaxis to transform this hi-def rendering into reality.
While mostly sidestepping the technical challenges of building self-driving technology, Musk chiefly focused on what an autonomous taxi service might mean. Starting next year, he said, Tesla owners should be able to share their personal cars by putting them into self-driving mode while they’re not using them. It would be a sort of Uber-cum-Airbnb, the car off hustling for a paycheck while its owner hustles for their own. A vehicle constantly on the move could obviate the need for parking: “You’re taking the ‘-ing lots’ out of parking lots,” Musk quipped, as a presentation showed the asphalt expanses around LA’s notoriously trafficky Dodger and SoFi Stadiums transformed into green spaces.
In short, Musk and Tesla argued that autonomy means more pleasant lives for all. “A car in an autonomous world is like a little lounge,” Musk said, noting a ride in a self-driving taxi would cost less than even a bus trip. “You can do whatever you want … and when you get out, you'll be at your destination. So yeah, it’s going to be awesome.”
But make personal self-driving cars too inexpensive, and too pleasant, and you’ve got a city-sized problem on your hands. Cheaper, comfortable rides could lead to even more traffic and even more driving, says Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning and the director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. For proof, check out the studies of Uber’s and Lyft’s effects on US cities; research suggests that, despite marketing promises about the death of private car ownership, their introduction brought more urban traffic, not less.
In this way, cheap robot taxis are a sort of double-edged sword, ending in more urban sprawl. “That’s going backward for the environment and for other urban goals—whether it’s being physically active or socially inclusive,” Millard-Ball says.
Taking the ‘-Ing Lot’ Out of Parking Lot?
Parks instead of parking lots could be a nice upside to self-driving. (Apartments instead of parking lots could also be really cool.) But it’ll take more than just the switch to self-driving to get there. Anyone running a self-driving car service hoping to use as little parking space as possible will have to make a super efficient network. That’s going to require people to share vehicles. And people don’t love to share.
“People love to move in a safe and comfortable way,” says Andreas Nienhaus, who heads up the consultancy Oliver Wyman’s Mobility Forum. “Whenever people have the choice and they don’t have the guidance, they will opt into a personal car.”
Car owners are also unlikely to share their private vehicles with others. Peer-to-peer car-sharing services, which let users rent out their cars to others when they’re not using them, have struggled to scale, Nienhaus says. “The car is still an emotional product,” he says. “It’s mine, and I’m annoyed when it comes back dirty. People are a bit hesitant to give away their car.”
One way to convince people to share self-driving vehicles would be to create public policies that make it more attractive for them to do so. Congestion pricing—which has worked in cities such as London and Singapore but failed to launch in New York City this year—would make it more expensive for people to enter some city roads at certain times of day. The prospect of splitting those costs could provide the kick in the pants needed to get people into the same self-driving car.
Problem is, this isn't really in Musk’s control. “An auto manufacturer is not a policy entity,” says Marlon Boarnet, a professor of public policy at USC and the director of the Metrans Transportation Consortium, a transportation research center. It’ll take much more than Tesla churning out Cybercabs to surround Dodger Stadium with green.
Sharing would require a sophisticated matching system, Boarnet points out, the type even Uber and Lyft don’t seem to have cracked. Both companies once offered more robust and cheap “pooled" options, but those mostly died away during the pandemic, as those companies began to focus on turning profits. There simply aren’t enough people going to exactly the same places at the same times of day to create a perfect shared ride service.
Cybercab City
For Tesla, and for cities, the stakes are high. Autonomy without sharing could be exactly the opposite of what Musk wants—a city that’s choked with traffic and a pain to travel in rather than one that is beautiful, with smooth roads.
The other hitch: Even if Tesla meets its incredibly aggressive self-driving goals—which include full autonomy in Texas and California next year—building a city around self-driving is going to take some time. City infrastructure, with its roads and parking lots and buildings, “is quite static,” says Brian Jencek, the director of planning at HOK, a design and architecture firm. Build a road, and form follows function. Someone will probably drive on it. If cities are redesigned to better accommodate self-driving Teslas, the implications could stick around for a long, long time. Or, as Jencek puts it: “Anytime we alter mobility, we change the very nature of our cities.”
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Rating:
8/10
WIRED
Smooth and detailed sound. 360-degree speakers spread the sound around. Excellent wireless range. Handy features like a multiband EQ and Bluetooth standby. IP67 dust and waterproofing. Durable, drop-tested design. Good battery life.
TIRED
Bass could be bigger and fuller. Not a major upgrade from the previous model. On the pricier side for its class.
Ultimate Ears has been steadily expanding its Bluetooth speaker lineup over the past few years, but the fixtures that have kept the brand in business—the popular Boom and Megaboom speakers—have remained virtually unchanged.
Now in its fourth iteration, the Boom 4 finally gets a USB-C charging port along with a few other tweaks, including updated drivers. The speaker could still use a bit more bass, but Ultimate Ears will happily point to the larger (and pricier) Megaboom for anyone wanting some extra bump.
In most respects, this is the same Boom speaker UE fans know and love, and that’s mostly a good thing. Offering refined portable sound and easy usability in a near-indestructible package, the Boom 4 is one of the best Bluetooth speakers of its kind.
Big Ole Buttons
The Boom 4 wouldn’t be an Ultimate Ears speaker without gigantic volume buttons—that’s kind of the brand's thing. It’s an iconic look that makes controlling the speaker easy, not just for you but for anyone who might wander by your picnic table. Up top you’ll find the rest of the controls, including a centralized multifunction button for options like play/pause and song skipping, a Bluetooth pairing button, and the power key.
The Boom’s biggest asset may be its build quality. The 7-inch-tall frame is layered in an ultra-tough fabric that makes it quite possibly the most durable speaker of its kind. Like most competitors, the Boom 4 is sealed to resist dust and water; its IP67 weatherproof rating means it can easily shrug off a dunk in the pool or a roll in the sand. It’s drop tested at up to 1.5 meters, and I can tell you from experience that dropping it off a short ledge, down a small flight of stairs, or off your bike onto the pavement may scuff it but likely won’t stop the fun.
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
Neither will walking away from the speaker with your phone, a classic party foul in the Bluetooth era. With its up to 150 feet in line-of-sight range and plenty of distance even with obstructions like walls or windows, you’ll have to wander pretty far to cause annoying hiccups.
The UE app adds more options, including a multiband EQ, the ability to pair the speaker with up to 150 other Ultimate Ears speakers (if you’re running some sort of outdoor rave), and an Alarm that lets you wake up to the last song played. There's also a new megaphone feature that lets you speak through the speaker from your phone, which could come in handy for calling the kids in for dinner a la intercoms from the ’80s.
My favorite feature has to be the ability to wake the speaker from standby mode without the need to get up from your lawn chair as you sip a cool drink. It’s the kind of convenience usually reserved for Wi-Fi speakers of the Sonos variety, without the need for a nearby network. One caveat is that keeping this feature on drains the battery more quickly with the speaker at rest, so you’ll want to save it for times when you’re using the speaker regularly.
As for the battery life, UE claims a whopping 15 hours per charge, though I think that’s ambitious. I’ve never got more than around 12 hours in testing, but your experience will vary depending on where you keep the volume.
Midrange Bliss
You’ve got to adjust sound expectations for any speaker as packable as the Boom 4, but within those constraints, the speaker provides a remarkably pleasant audio experience. Its dual drivers are designed for 360-degree sound, meaning you’ll get a good experience no matter which way the speaker faces, including whether it’s rolled onto the ground or set on its end caps.
The basic sound signature dives surprisingly deep into instrumental textures, especially talented from the midrange up. There’s a warm and pulpy punch to instruments like snares and percussion, solid presence in vocals and acoustic instruments, and some sweet clarity rising into the treble, especially noticeable with foundational synths and effects.
Photograph: Ryan Waniata
I like to watch TV on my laptop from our little Costco hot tub on a crisp fall evening, and decent sound makes all the difference. The Boom 4 is a great companion for such adventures. I often found myself zeroing in on little nuances like the rasp of Martin Short’s voice in Only Murders in the Building, which really brought the character to life.
The Boom 4’s main downside is a relative lack of oomph in the lower bass when compared to rivals like the JBL Flip. The Flip’s exposed passive radiators at each end drill down deeper and with more authority in the lower bass, which adds some extra gravitas that works particularly well outdoors. On the flip side (pun intended), JBL’s speaker has more shout and less finesse in the upper mids, sounding more aggressive overall. If the Flip is a rocker, the Boom 4 is more of a jazz cat.
Either speaker outperforms the Tribit Stormbox 2 (9/10, WIRED Recommends), especially if you punch up the volume; the cheaper speaker resorts to distortion more readily and often. That’s to be expected for something that costs as little as half the price. At $150, the Boom 4 is a little pricey for what you get if you don't always blast the speaker. Many may be fine with the cheaper Flip or ultra-affordable Stormbox 2.
Otherwise, it’s hard to go wrong with the Boom 4. It’s a killer choice in multiple scenarios, with expansive sound that provides more touch and fidelity than the vast majority of cylindrical copycats, especially from no-name brands. If you’re after a life-proof sonic companion to accompany you everywhere from the backyard to the great outdoors, the stalwart UE Boom speaker remains a top choice.
Back in 2020, Sarah Cooper’s “How to Medical” lip-sync of Donald Trump’s proposed Covid-19 cures went viral on social media. TikTok’s latest trend gives that schtick a new spin.
‘Trump Was Born to Be a Teenage Girl’ Is the Sarah Cooper Schtick for the ‘Brat’ Election
Back in 2020, Sarah Cooper’s “How to Medical” lip-sync of Donald Trump’s proposed Covid-19 cures went viral on social media. TikTok’s latest trend gives that schtick a new spin.
Photo-Illustration: Darrell Jackson/Getty Images
Across nearly 30 videos, TikTokker @kiera.ln has gotten tens of millions of views. They started rolling in when she posted a clip of herself—in a silk robe, wearing sunglasses in bed—lip-syncing Donald Trump’s almost-infamous comments about Florida governor Ron DeSantis (whom he calls “Ron DeSanctimonious”) needing “a personality transplant.” That was in late September. The latest, posted Wednesday, is a lip sync of Trump on Fox News saying he would give himself “an A+.”
That most recent video felt like a full-circle moment. Trump’s “A+” comment came from an appearance on Fox and Friends in response to a question about how he handled the Covid-19 pandemic. The last person (give or take) to go mega-viral for lip-syncing the former president was Sarah Cooper, whose “How to Medical” video was a send-up of Trump’s suggestions that coronavirus be treated with disinfectant or UV light.
Released in April of 2020, Cooper’s TikTok went viral everywhere, from YouTube to X. They had nowhere else to go. It was the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns and everyone was stuck inside, doomscrolling for something to laugh at. She ended up getting an agent, a Netflix special, and a role in an off-Broadway play. She wrote three books, including a memoir she released last year. Cooper is the epitome of the viral TikTok star who parlayed her internet fame into a career.
@kiera.ln could do the same. But her videos, nearly all of which are titled “‘Trump Was Born to Be a Teenage Girl,” are lip syncs for a completely different era. The 2024 election cycle is all about being “brat”; Democrats are coming out and calling Trump “weird” now. Whereas Cooper’s videos felt like an attempt to fact-check the then-president by way of humor, @kiera.ln’s strategy of making him look like a Mean Girl goes straight to his insults. Four years ago, or even eight, Democrats—and those who support them on the internet—were loath to go that low. Calling his “nasty” comments nasty is now a frequent occurrence.
Comparing the former president to a teenage girl has a long history. Nylon did it in 2016 with Trump’s tweets, highlighting the perceived pettiness or immaturity in his comments. But even then there were those who pointed out it was almost unfair to teenage girls, who, in the opinion of one commenter, at least “have the chance of growing up and realizing just how terrible they've been.” Trump, at 78 years old, doesn’t have as much time left for emotional growth. Campaign emails from his presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, suggest he’s “old and quite weird,” presumably having already reached his final form.
Over the summer, Charli XCX, whose album Brat launched an entire craze, tweeted “kamala IS brat” shortly after Harris announced she would be running for president. It shifted the course of the election and turned mudslinging slime green. In Charli’s estimation, to be brat is to be vulnerable and messy—and admit it. Mean girls aren’t brats, but brats know how to be honest about who they are. Brats will meet you on your internet turf and call you a clown while applying their own lipstick. Brats go on the Call Her Daddy podcast and say many women are “not aspiring to be humble.”
Election Day in the US is 18 days away. Then, presumably, Americans will know which meme, er, candidate won. Maybe @kiera.ln will leverage her viral TikToks into something new. Maybe she’ll find herself in 2026 looking back the way Cooper did last year, telling The New York Times amid her Off Broadway debut that she was thankful for the support she got for her Trump lip syncs, even if she feared being known as Trump Girl long after the meme was over, “even though I know that if I die right now, my obituary would have the name Donald Trump in it, which is not great, but what are you going to do?”
The Monitor is aweekly columndevoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to TikTok.
Following the Trump-Harris debate in September, Cooper released a new video, lip-syncing Trump’s performance. After it went up, she wrote in her newsletter that the decision was regrettable. “I truly feel like this may be my last one,” she wrote. A new TikTokker can come grab the torch.
Loose Threads:
Have you heard about Terrifier 3? Apparently Damien Leone’s unrated horror flick brought in a tidy $18.9 million at the box office last weekend. Though, the Hollywood Reporter hears that it might be even more popular than that figure let on, because teens and tweens might be buying tickets to PG-rated The Wild Robot and sneaking into Terrifier 3 instead.
The big Pokémon data leak. Game Freak, the developer behind many Pokémon games, suffered a pretty substantial data leak last weekend. There’s already a subreddit devoted to going through all the leaked information. It has gotten weird. Apparently there’s some lore about a girl who had a child with a Pokémon?
Turn down for tots. A 2-year-old took his uncle’s phone at what appears to be a wedding and did a dance that matches perfectly with DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What.” You have to watch it to truly appreciate it.
As the resident parenting reviewer here at WIRED, I look at a lot of parenting gear. From baby monitors to the best strollers, there's a ton of gear to consider when you're a parent. I'll never forget how overwhelming it felt to make my baby registry before I was a mom—what would I need?? How could I possibly know before meeting my kid and finding out what parenting was really like?
Now, I've got a better idea of what's handy, as do other fellow parents here at WIRED. If you're gifting for a new parent, these are some of our favorite innovative solutions to make the gross, grueling parts of early parenthood just a little easier. Members of our Gear Team have tried them all. And yes, some of them are pretty cute.
Updated October 2024: We've refreshed this gift guide for the holiday season with new gifts and ideas.
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Adrienne So contributed to this guide.
Photograph: Beis
A Sleek Diaper Bag
Béis The Diaper Pack
I adored this diaper bag for my early parenting days. For the first year, everything is small (like your baby!) and I found the Béis Diaper Pack (9/10, WIRED Recommends) was the perfect companion. The bag is perfect for errands and short outings and can fit plenty of diapers, wipes, extra onesies, a couple of soft toys, and a 5-ounce bottle. It also comes with a changing pad, which sits in its own pocket. It's too big to truly wear as a comfortable hip pack, but it's the perfect size for any parent to sling across their back before scooping up their infant.
This is a fact: Newly born humans are so small that they can't blow their own noses. Amazing! Through the first year and especially into a cold-infested toddlerhood, this handy electric nasal aspirator has been worth its weight in gold. It's been much easier to get this aspirator into my son's nostril and hit the On button rather than wrangle both him and a tube, then manually sucking the snot out before he rips his head away from the contraption.
Frida has a whole line of attractive, no-nonsense solutions to other common baby issues, like passing gas and cradle cap, but the nasal aspirators are our favorite (though I'm also a fan of the cheaper, manual nasal aspirator). Every parent needs a fast, effective way of giving their little disease vector some nasal relief.
Do you ever try something and immediately regret not having it sooner? I tested this baby carrier right before my son turned 1, and as soon as I strapped it on, I wished I'd had it from day one. The cross back was much more comfortable to me than the big hip straps that are on other carriers, and the soft jersey feel felt like everything a baby wrap promised to me without the struggle of, well, baby wrapping. It's only designed for that first year or until baby is 20 pounds, but I'd have used this every day if I'd had it with my little baby.
This is one of my favorite gifts we got that wasn't on any registry or list we had. Our best friend gifted us the Rockit after seeing that we could attach it to any stroller and use it to lull our baby to sleep. And it worked! It was handy to turn on whenever we took a long pause on a walk, like at a farmers' market booth or chatting with a neighbor, to keep my son from waking back up due to the lack of movement. It can't full-on move the stroller back and forth like the Cybex e-Gazelle S (8/10, WIRED Recommends), but it's the next best thing.
If you want to buy a new parent something they might not get for themselves, you might want to consider a baby-food maker. Many new parents might think it's a luxury, especially with critical grandparents shouting, "In my day, we mashed food with forks!" But for a year, the Babycook helped me feed a hungry baby who was just too grouchy and impatient to gum down cut-up pieces of cooked carrot.
Whenever WIRED reviewer Adrienne So was cooking dinner for the rest of her family, she simply threw a couple pieces of food into the Babycook. You can steam and mash with single servings or multiple ones, in an appliance that takes up very little room on the counter and is easy to clean. She could cook several days' worth of food at a time and either freeze it or store it in the fridge.
Being a new parent is an onslaught of exhaustion combined with a lot of noise, especially if you have a fussy baby. There are some days where babies just need to cry it out; some kiddos are just colicky and tend to cry more than others. If your parent friend is talking about how much they can't handle the crying anymore, get them a pair of Loop Experience 2s.
These earplugs are designed for concerts to make the music a safer decibel, but I found them handy to grab on meltdown-heavy days so I could still hear my kid, but didn't want to rip off my skin anymore at the sound of screaming. This helps me stay calm, which in turn, helps baby calm down, too. Plus they come in fun colors and have a tiny case you can easily attach to your keys (it's where I keep mine!) so it's handy for sudden loud locations.
Both my husband and I were gifted Kindles when our son was a couple of months old. We were both so delighted to switch to an e-reader after spending so many 2 am feeding shifts and rocking sessions looking at Reddit for the 374th time. (I'd like to thank every dramatic member of r/AITA for keeping me awake at those hours.) Having a book to grab instead of scrolling the internet was easier on the eyes and the brain. I liked reading mystery and fantasy books with enough drama to keep me as awake as silly internet drama can. I grabbed a library card and started getting books through Libby to send to my Kindle, but you could add a Kindle gift card (or give a gift card if you know they already have a Kindle!)
★ New Kindle on the Block:Amazon just announced new Kindles, including the first color Kindle and a new basic Kindle. The Kindle Colorsoft ($280) is available for preorder now with October 30 as a ship date, and the new Kindle ($110) is available now. We haven't tested these yet, so stay tuned to hear how they compare to the rest of the Kindle lineup. But I wouldn't blame you for jumping on a new Kindle now—personally, I've got my eye on the matcha green Kindle.
Beautiful by Drew Barrymore Beautiful Electric Kettle
New babies mean little hands you have to keep safe from hot surfaces. If the parents in your life are obsessive tea drinkers like I am, or pour-over coffee fans, get them our favorite electric kettle as a gift. Not only is it beautiful on the eyes and easy on the wallet, but it has a ton of preset temperatures for their tired brains to quickly tap the one they need, and it's double-walled, so swinging baby hands (and eventually rambunctious toddler hands) won't get burned if they accidentally touch it.
Babies are not relaxing to have in your house. You have to worry about a lot of things, including if they're warm or cold enough. You don't want babies to be too warm (that can make them dangerously lethargic), but if they're too cold, they'll keep waking up. Instead of guessing their room temperature and whether you need to run the AC again, get a smart temperature sensor to place in their bedroom. That way, you can easily check the specific temperature of their room from anywhere in the house and can even connect a smart thermostat to it to have it kick on at certain temperatures.
I used the Aqara Temperature and Humidity Sensor when my son was little and loved it—you will need an Aqara Hub ($60)—but Google's newest thermostat, the 4th Gen Smart Learning Thermostat (9/10, WIRED Recommends), comes with a temperature sensor included and no hub required.
This video monitor looks nice and will serve a parent even after their child can start crawling, moving around more, or getting out of bed. An easy choice is the affordable (in the world of baby monitors) Eufy SpaceView. It doesn’t require Wi-Fi and instead uses more reliable FHSS radio connection. It's simpler to set up and more secure than using Wi-Fi. Check out our guide to the Best Baby Monitors for more suggestions.
If your mom bestie is lamenting about wanting a wearable pump, buy her the Imani i2 (7/10, WIRED Recommends). It's much more affordable than other wearable pumps, but just as powerful and easy to use. There's no app, just a motor and handful of controls on the top of the pump, and the silicone shields are super comfortable for pumping. I got some of my best pumping results with this zero-frills pump.
This might not be your friend's first kid. That's a great thing, but if they've got a toddler around the house while dealing with the newborn stage at the same time, things might be going missing. Maybe their keys (grab them a Bluetooth tracker!) or maybe their TV remote, which is especially heartbreaking when you're already exhausted and can't figure out where it went.
Google's new TV Streamer (8/10, WIRED Recommends) is easy to set up, pretty on the eyes, and is a nice improvement over the previous Chromecast experience. You can even use it to monitor and control your smart home devices and video feeds. But best of all, there's a button on the primary device to make the remote beep so that it's easier to find.
Another place to put those thousands of photos on your phone is onto a digital photo frame. I love using Aura's frames since you can add photos easily through the Aura app, or just connect it to a folder in Google Photos. Little ones change so much in their early months (and all the years after), so it's such a treat to see a photo pop up with how small your child was just a few months ago.
It's easy for family members to add to, and easy to add to other digital photo frames that might be at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They want to see the photos too, after all!
In some ways, traveling when your baby is little is easier than wrangling them during the toddler years (less need for entertaining!).
For those parents who you know love to travel, or can't avoid plane trips even though they've got a little one, No Reception Club's duffel bag is supremely handy. It has an included organizing insert, multiple ways to carry it, and several pockets to keep everything—including, perhaps most important, an insulated pocket in the front. It's perfect for baby bottles, pumped milk, or even toddler snacks that need to stay cool.
Nena Farrell is a product writer and reviewer at WIRED, based in San Diego, California. She specializes in smart home gear, parenting, and textiles, and dabbles in a variety of other home and tech beats. Before joining WIRED, she covered smart home gear at The New York Times’ Wirecutter and... Read more
Sixty-five years ago, the Army's leaders unveiled its “ultimate weapon” for the age of atomic warfare. Here’s how the service’s vision stands up to today's reality.
What the US Army’s 1959 ‘Soldier of Tomorrow’ Got Right About the Future of Warfare
Sixty-five years ago, the Army's leaders unveiled its “ultimate weapon” for the age of atomic warfare. Here’s how the service’s vision stands up to today's reality.
Photograph: Ed Clark; The LIFE Picture Collection; Shutterstock
On a brisk afternoon in early August of 1959, the United States Army debuted what the service billed as its “ultimate weapon”—not a new bomb, not a specialized tank or fighting vehicle, but a single soldier outfitted in combat gear worthy of the Atomic Age.
That soldier was Sergeant First Class Ben Sawicki and, for a few fleeting hours, he represented the Army’s vision of the “soldier of tomorrow”—a future warrior that “will look so weird he may scare the enemy to death without firing a shot,” as military planners told Life magazine at the time.
Appearing before US military and defense leaders (as well as a few curious civilian spectators) at an Association of the US Army event in Washington, DC, Sawicki struck a “spooky” figure. The soldier’s face was shrouded in a heavy “plastic laminate” helmet outfitted with infrared binoculars for night vision and a two-way radio for rapid communication, his body covered head-to-toe in a camouflage “layered nylon armor” purportedly designed to counter not just small arms fire but also the effects of a nuclear blast, as Army officials told The New York Times.
Armed with a 7.62-mm M14 battle rifle (and plans for a lighter standard-issue weapon down the line), the most unusual additions to his futuristic-looking kit included a bandolier of explosive charges for digging foxholes and a “jump belt” jetpack that would enable him to traverse the battlefield in 30-foot leaps. With enhanced survivability, mobility, and lethality, he is “accurately representative of the fighting man in the 1965 era,” as a contemporaneous report in the service’s Armor magazine described him, ready for whatever America’s adversaries may throw at him on the nuclear battlefield.
“With this outfit, I could take on 10 soldiers with ordinary equipment and kill ’em all,” Sawicki colorfully told LIFE.
Of course, the Army’s “GI of the future” unveiled more than six decades ago, like most fantastic visions of the decades ahead, didn’t totally come true. But some of the elements of the soldier’s ambitious kit did end up foreshadowing future innovations for American combat troops. Here’s a look at what the “soldier of tomorrow” from 1959 got right (and wrong) about the future of warfare.
Head Case
The US military had relied on the M1 combat helmet since the United States entered World War II. Sawicki’s helmet stands apart from the M1 not just in the use of novel materials but also in both its departure from the “steel pot” design with slight molding over the ears and its fully integrated communications system in the form of a mounted two-way radio.
Indeed, Sawicki’s helmet contained the seeds of future systems. The Personnel Armor System for Ground Troops (PASGT) helmet, adopted in the early 1980s as a replacement for the M1, features the added ballistic protection around the ears, while the PASGT’s own replacement, the Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH), was specifically designed for use with modern tactical headsets. Both the PASGT and MICH were made from ballistic Kevlar fiber, which is likely stronger than the nondescript “laminate” alluded to in the coverage of Sawicki’s debut, but the 1959 design elements remain present nonetheless.
The Army has experimented with mixing and matching these design features in recent years. For example, the new(ish) Enhanced Combat Helmet, designed in conjunction with the Marine Corps to replace the MICH-based Advanced Combat Helmet, is fabricated from thermoplastic rather than Kevlar fiber but primarily available in a “high cut” tactical style that reduces ear coverage. Interestingly, the forthcoming Integrated Head Protection System (IHPS) may come closest to synthesizing most of the unique design of Sawicki’s helmet. Made from lightweight polyethylene and designed with integrated rails for the seamless inclusion of comms equipmentand night-vision devices, the IHPS even features an optional motorcycle-style “mandible” and eye shield for additional facial protection—a step closer to the distinctive “permanent smile” that creeped out onlookers in Washington decades ago, as contemporary newsreels described it.
We Own the Night
While the Pentagon had fielded night-vision optics since World War II, like the so-called sniperscope that relied on actively bathing targets with infrared light, Sawicki’s helmet-mounted “infrared binoculars” envisioned a shift toward “passive” helmet-mounted devices to help soldiers pierce the darkness. The first significant passive night-vision optic appeared during the Vietnam War, when the Army fielded the weapon-mounted AN/PVS-2 “Starlight Scope” to soldiers tasked with operating in low-light jungle conditions (although, true to its name, the system performed better in moonlight than in total darkness). It wasn’t until the 1970s that the service would end up fielding its first pair of helmet-mounted night-vision goggles, the AN/PVS-5, a system that set the US military on a course to “own the night” with unmatched technological superiority in subsequent decades.
Today, the prospect of enhancing a soldier’s situational awareness has evolved far beyond simply preparing them to fight at night. The latest night-vision system fielded by the Army, known as the AN/PSQ-42 Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular (ENVG-B), doesn’t just equip service members with infrared and thermal vision capabilities but can also seamlessly feed the view from a specialized weapon optic known at the Family of Weapon Sights into the goggles’ field of vision, allowing soldiers to scope out the battlefield from cover without exposing themselves to hostile fire.
Then there’s the matter of the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), the Army’s futuristic “smart” goggles. Currently based on a ruggedized version of the Microsoft HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset, the IVAS is both night vision goggles and futuristic heads-up display, capable of feeding sensor inputs into a soldier’s line of sight. The Army has long experimented with helmet-mounted displays for decades as part of various “future warrior” programs, and the IVAS hasn’t been immune to the pitfalls of previous efforts—namely, complaints from soldiers about “mission-affecting physical impairments” like headache, nausea, and discomfort associated with prolonged use. And the future of the long-delayed headset now appears uncertain anyway: According to Breaking Defense, the service may end up going back to the drawing board with a new primary contractor for the sophisticated system as part of its IVAS Next initiative after auditing its existing night vision goggle capabilities. Still, between the ENVG-B and IVAS, helmet-mounted night vision devices have progressed far beyond anything Sawicki’s chain of command had previously imagined.
Armor Up
The bulletproof vest and camouflage suit combination that Sawicki donned for his AUSA debut, referred to in contemporaneous publications as “layered nylon armor” and “layered nylon vest,” is actually a bit closer to modern Army personal protective equipment than the flak jackets that were accompanying soldiers downrange during the Vietnam War. Currently under development, the Soldier Protection System (SPS) offers modern soldiers a “lightweight modular, scalable and tailorable suite of protective equipment,” according to the Army’s description. What this really means is that the protective ensemble comes in several different pieces that work together to maximize soldier survivability without impairing mobility; in terms of body armor, this refers primarily to the soft armor Torso and Extremity Protection subsystem and the hard armor Vital Torso Protection subsystem that, using reinforced ceramic plates, offer improved ballistic protection against small arms fire.
Protecting soldiers from bullets is one thing, but protecting them from the effects of nuclear explosions, as Army leaders told The New York Times Sawicki’s suit would, is another thing entirely—at least, in terms of equipment. While the well-worn Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) ensemble has been safeguarding Americans service members against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats for years, it’s an entirely separate system of personal protective gear rather than one integrated into the SPS or the standard-issue Army Combat Uniform. And while the 1959 design calls for specially designed “‘welded’ combat boots” and “molded plastic gloves” to help protect soldiers on an irradiated battlefield, modern troops must, unfortunately, go into battle with their Army Regulation 670-1-authorized boots and tactical gloves, apart from what’s in their MOPP kit. Then again, if the nukes do start flying, nobody will survive long enough for ground combat anyway.
Bullet Time
While the 1959 “soldier of tomorrow” appears armed with an M14, advances in firearms technology have long since left the beloved battle rifle in the dust. The Army began replacing the M14 with the lighter-weight 5.56-mm M16 assault rifle in the late 1960s, which was itself replaced by the shorter-barreled M4 carbine during the Global War on Terror in the 2000s. Replacing the M16 and M4 family of rifles has proven difficult in the past, but it’s safe to say that the promises from Army brass in 1959 of a lighter standard-issue rifle for soldiers have, for the most part, come true in the intervening decades—even if the new XM7 rifle, recently adopted under the service’s Next Generation Squad Weapon (NGSW) program, is actually noticeablyheavier than the M4.
So, too, has the promise of “new high-velocity bullets.” While the Army in the early 2000s fielded the 5.56-mm M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round for improved performance over the standard M855 ammo previously adopted in the 1980s, the service undertook a major small arms study in 2017 to determine whether soldiers required a different caliber ammunition to deal with the sudden proliferation of body armor among adversaries. The study determined that the Army’s next rifle should come chambered in 6.8 mm, which would purportedly offer significantly improved performance at range compared to both 5.56-mm and 7.62-mm rounds. From there, the Army ended up selecting Sig Sauer to produce its two 6.8mm NGSW systems in 2022, weapons the service began officially fielding earlier this year. It may have taken several decades, but the Army’s new high-velocity round is finally here.
Rocket Man
While certain elements of Sawicki’s combat kit are clearly represented in recent military innovations, others simply never came to fruition. The automatic foxhole-digging charges, for example, never materialized as an effective replacement for the beloved handheld entrenching tool, despite their prevalence among military futurists at the time. But if there’s one vision that has persisted in military and defense circles, it’s that of jetpack-equipped troops.
The Defense Department has pursued the militarized jetpack for decades, starting with research and development in the 1950s and culminating in October 1961 with the successful demonstration of Bell Aerosystems’s Small Rocket Lift Device (or, colloquially, the “Bell Rocket Belt”) for President John F. Kennedy at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Army ended up abandoning development of the Rocket Belt over fuel constraints that limited its potential tactical applications, but US military planners would revisit the concept time and again in subsequent decades.
Unfortunately, the era of the American jetpack appears to be coming to a close: The Pentagon has moved on from its jetpack dreams in favor of a more elegant individual lift effort in the form of the powered paraglider. Indeed, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Portable Personal Air Mobility System program is testing lightweight one-man flight systems, while the Army recently released a solicitation for its similarly named Personnel Air Mobility System effort for a motorized paraglider for paratroopers that, if all goes to plan, would end up “reducing dependency on traditional aircraft platforms and extending the range available through traditional parachute infiltration systems,” as the service put it. The US military will teach individual service members to fly, but it most likely will not involve a jetpack anytime soon.
The Tomorrow War
Sixty-five years after Sawicki debuted the Army’s next-generation kit, the “soldier of tomorrow” will actually look more like this:
Sawicki may not have proven an “ultimate weapon” for the Army to deploy around the world, but 1959s’ “GI of the future” made some fairly accurate predictions about the changing face of the American soldier. But beyond the foxhole-diggers and the jetpack, the only thing it got seriously wrong was the prevalence of nuclear fallout on the battlefield. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.
Even the makers of the Guardian Cap admit it looks silly. But for a sport facing an existential brain-injury crisis, once unthinkable solutions have now become almost normal.
Courtesy of Guardian Sports
Late in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass over the middle of the field, charged forward, and lowered his body to brace for contact. The side of his helmet smacked the face mask of linebacker Quay Walker, and the back of it whacked the ground as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his feet after the 9-yard gain, Granson tossed the football to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this otherwise ordinary play was only noteworthy because of what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protective helmet covering called a Guardian Cap.
Already mandatory for most positions at all NFL preseason practices, as well as regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these soft shells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlit them for optional game use, citing a roughly 50 percent drop in training camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of action this fall, only 10 NFL players had actually taken the field with one on, according to a league spokesperson. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself covered by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo to simulate the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to wear it for real.
“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”
There is no ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has staff T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”
It can be tough to square the reality that the apparent future of football headgear resembles something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in games in the NFL—a league known for policing every inch of player equipment to protect its image—doesn’t just speak to their lab-tested utility (even if published, peer-reviewed on-field data remains lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football at large.
The dangers of strapping on a helmet have never been clearer, given the link between repeated blows to the head—whether concussion-causing or not—and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (otherwise known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive issues like depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever, between the NFL’s funding of private research efforts and a rapidly innovating football headgear industry.
And at the center of it all, on the sport’s biggest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop shop that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to find a foothold in football as anything but a joke.
The story of the Guardian Cap starts in 1996, some 15 years before its invention. Settled in the Atlanta area with their then-four children, Erin, a former middle-school math teacher, and Lee, a chemical engineer, teamed up to found The Hanson Group, a business-to-business provider of chemical materials. Specializing in polyurethanes and epoxies, the company has since built, among other things, transparent body shields for the US Army, coatings of fuel tank plates for Boeing airplanes, and the outer layers of multiple brands of golf balls.
Then, in 2010, the Hansons were contacted out of the blue by an industrial designer named Bert Straus, who decades earlier had created a padded helmet attachment, the ProCap, that was worn in games by a handful of NFL players. Explaining that he was working on a new type of headgear, a hard-shell helmet with interior padding as well as a ProCap-esque soft shell mounted on top, Straus enlisted The Hanson Group to make the integral skin foam for this cushioned outer layer.
That winter, the trio traveled to a hotel ballroom in Manhattan and presented their product to NFL officials as part of a special league committee meeting on helmet safety. Even with live testimony provided by former Buffalo Bills safety Mark Kelso, who wore a ProCap for four-plus seasons in the early ’90s, the attempt to convince the NFL of the potential of soft-shell technology was not well-received, the Hansons recall. “That lit a fire under us,” Erin says.
Convinced that the best market opportunity lay with a one-size-fits-all option that could retrofit existing helmets at every level of football, as opposed to the brand- and model-specific ProCap, Erin and Lee struck out on their own. But the biggest difference in their eventual prototype had to do with how it was attached to the helmet in the first place: Its straps looped around the facemask and fastened to themselves, thereby loosely “floating” on top of the helmet rather than affixing directly via sticky-backed tabs.
The result was what the Hansons would later summarize in their United States patent request as a “protective helmet cap” with “a durable energy absorbing outer shell, which lessens the initial impact to the helmet … [and] an inner surface that allows the outer shell to slide over the surface of a helmet thereby reducing forces applied to a wearer.”
As development continued throughout 2011, Erin and Lee used money from The Hanson Group to send the caps away for independent drop testing—a longtime headgear industry standard in which a helmet-wearing dummy head is dropped onto a modular elastomer pad for measuring impact and shock absorption—at accredited sites like Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, ICS Laboratories, and the Southern Impact Research Center. They also shelled out for additional outside testing to ensure that the caps wouldn’t affect neck torque and that they maintained a lower coefficient of friction relative to the usual football helmet’s polycarbonate shell, to ensure that crucial “sliding” effect.
“Over the years, we’ve spent a couple hundred grand on testing, because we did so much before we put them on the field,” Erin says. “The whole goal was to help, and it was certainly to not hurt, so we had to vet the product.”
Initially branding themselves as POC Ventures—the acronym stood for “protecting our children”—the Hansons launched publicly at the January 2012 convention of the American Football Coaches Association in San Antonio. The goal was to sell caps and eventually attract an established sports equipment company to buy them out. Instead, Erin says, what few attendees dared approach their booth weren’t exactly warm.
“You’re sissifying football,” Erin says, recounting one reaction.
“That’s the stupidest thing in the world,” Lee says of another.
But they soon found their first big believer. That year, at a medical conference in Destin, Florida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a physician for the University of South Carolina athletic department, who later looked at the caps’ testing data and came away impressed enough for the Gamecocks football team—including future first-overall NFL pick Jadeveon Clowney—to start using them in their 2013 summer practices. Naturally it wasn’t long before one of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.
“It really was one team giving it a shot, and it just kept spreading,” Erin says.
Along the way, the Hansons abandoned the POC Ventures name after receiving a strongly worded letter from the Swedish cycling and snow sport helmet manufacturer POC, settling on Guardian and a halo logo as reflections of their religious faith. (They later switched the latter, too, to an angel’s wing.) Their belief in their business mission was soon rewarded in April 2017, when the rechristened company was anointed as a winner of an NFL-sponsored research competition for protective football equipment, the HeadHealthTECH challenge, receiving $20,000 to fund future biomechanical testing for their Guardian Caps.
The Hansons were back in the door.
Technically speaking, Erin and Lee never saw their grand prize. Rather, the money ended up being routed directly to Biokinetics, an Ottawa-based laboratory that partners with the NFL for helmet testing. The results were then analyzed by Biocore, a biomechanical engineering firm out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that also acts as a league consultant for player equipment, including helmets.
At the time, the lone model of the Guardian Cap was the Guardian XT, a 7-ounce soft shell then already popular with a growing handful of elite college programs and hundreds of high school teams nationwide. But the results didn’t measure up under lab conditions simulating the higher speeds and masses of professional football hits. “We didn’t really find that it had much of an effect on the NFL impact environment,” says Ann Bailey Good, a senior engineer at Biocore.
So the Hansons added an extra layer of padding to the XTs to create a beefier version, the 12-ounce Guardian NXT (with the N standing for NFL). It fared much better. For a 2021 article published in Annals of Biomedical Engineering, five authors—Bailey Good, two Biocore colleagues, and two other engineers who regularly consult for the NFL Players’ Association—subjected their crash dummy helmets to two main tests. The first involved hitting them with a pneumatic ram at speeds and points of impact that were determined in part through video review of concussion-causing plays among linemen during past NFL games. The second, for which the collision sites were picked to minimize face mask interaction and thus maximize helmet-on-helmet exposure, saw dummies with NXTs crash into each other with the aid of an electric belt-driven sled.
The results were assembled using the Head Acceleration Response Metric (HARM), a formula that Biocore, the NFLPA's engineering consultants, and several other researchers helped develop. for measuring the severity of an impact and how that correlates to helmet safety and performance. On average, as the study found, the addition of a Guardian NXT was reduced HARM by 9 percent over control helmets with no caps; by comparison, its competition in the study, the ProTech—a modernized version of the ProCap—only reduced HARM by an average of 5 percent.
Two aggregate scores were also calculated, by weighing test conditions based on how often those types of impacts occurred to actual NFL linemen and how many reported concussions were sustained due to those impacts. The NXT performed similarly well here, leading the study to conclude that the “Results … suggest that using the GC NXT may reduce the head impact severity exposure for linemen.”
“That’s really when it started to become a thing in the league,” Bailey Good says now.
The NFL soon brought the Guardian Cap to its Health and Safety Committee, a group of mostly team-, league-, and union-affiliated doctors, and to its Competition Committee, a rules-making body of coaches and team executives appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell. “We talked about the benefits we saw,” says Jeff Miller, an NFL executive vice president overseeing health and player safety.
The next year, in 2022, the caps were rolled out for something of a trial period as the Competition Committee recommended that club owners vote to mandate them at preseason practices for select positions that according to league data had sustained the “most frequent head impacts” (offensive and defensive linemen, tight ends, and linebackers) during practice, Miller says. The mandate also only lasted for a four-week stretch when the “greatest density of concussions” had historically occurred—from the start of training camp to the second preseason game.
As the Guardian Caps gained more exposure thanks to the NFL’s endorsement, increasing outside research helped shed more light on how they function. “I think it seems logical to most folks: If you cover your whole head in a massive pillow, maybe that’d help you more,” says Nicholas Cecchi, a colead author on a 2023 study at Stanford University that in part performed similar lab impact tests on a version of the Guardian XT as Biocore did with the NXT several years prior. “But there’s more to how it works that didn’t seem intuitive.”
In particular, Cecchi, who was a PhD student in bioengineering at the time of the study, cites the “sliding” effect produced by the Guardian Caps’ design. “It really did seem like their main effectiveness was coming from the reduced surface friction on the exterior, and then also the decoupling of different layers,” he says. In other words, the Guardian Cap isn’t just a hat on a hat; the two-part, add-on system has its benefits.
When a helmet hit happens, says Cecchi, “you’ve got linear forces and rotational forces. Linear are going to be reduced by compression of the materials. Rotational forces will be reduced by the shearing and sliding of the different materials. The more that happens, the more it’ll absorb the rotation, so less rotation will be experienced by your head.
“From the lab tests, it seemed very clear, in almost all scenarios, the Guardian Cap reduced the magnitude of those rotational accelerations, and other metrics linked to football-related injury risks, by a good amount.”
Less conclusive is the data regarding how the Guardian Caps perform on the actual field. In addition to their lab component, Cecchi and his colleagues used instrumented mouth guards to look at helmet-to-helmet impacts sustained by a handful of linebackers on Stanford’s football team in practices over two seasons: in 2019, when players wore bare helmets, and in 2021, when Guardian Caps were mandatory.
“We did not observe any significant reductions in any measure of impact severity after implementation of the padded helmet shell cover,” the study concluded.
Similarly, in 2022, at the University of North Carolina, sensor-equipped helmets logged 14 full-contact practices among 10 players: five with Guardian Caps and five who opted to not wear them. As researchers later wrote in a late-2023 report for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the coverings “did not affect head impact kinematic outcomes.”
But these studies also categorized their on-field findings as “preliminary” and “pilot,” respectively, in part due to the obvious small sample sizes. Here again, Biocore, backed by the NFL, is leading the way: According to Bailey Good, a paper unpacking the Guardian Caps’ effect in their first two years of preseason practice use—in particular the league’s touted 50 percent drop in concussions among linemen, tight ends, and linebackers, from an average of 35 in 2018, 2019, and 2021 to 18 during this last postseason—was submitted “a few months ago” and is currently being peer reviewed.
“We certainly considered other things like number of practices, practice intensity, et cetera,” Bailey Good says. “But looking at the results that we saw in the preseason related to concussions, it was very promising.”
Meaningful game data will take even longer to surface; the NCAA has yet to formally approve Guardian Caps for games at the college level, and while the National Federation of State High School Associations has allowed them in both practices and games since 2013, few examples of the latter exist. But the Hansons reject the idea that further testing is required to judge the credentials of their creation.
“We didn't just develop this three months ago—it’s been out on the field for 12 years,” Lee says. “I know it's anecdotal data, but what everyone tells us is that they feel better, they play better, and they have reductions in the numbers of injuries.”
At the same time, the Hansons are sensitive to what they see as a common overstatement of the caps’ capabilities. “We do not talk about reducing concussions,” Erin says. “Science can only measure reduction of impact, reduction of forces. How that relates to brain injuries—there's a lot of unknowns that are still out there. Is it responsible to say this is the panacea for all? No, it's not going to fix everything.
“But do we know they’re making a difference? Hell yeah.”
More and more appear to be agreeing every day. Sitting in a conference room at the Guardian Sports offices in late August, Erin hits Play on a voice memo that a new client from Denver recently sent to Guardian’s national sales manager. “This is a good one,” she says, as a familiar southern twang comes through the speaker:
“Hey … this is Peyton Manning calling … I coach an eighth-grade youth football team … and I was thinking I wanted to maybe ask about ordering some Guardian Caps … I feel like it’s the right thing to do.”
Two football helmets bake in the afternoon sun atop a picnic table, one wearing a Guardian Cap and the other bare. The Hansons put them here, outside the entrance to their company’s headquarters in a suburban business park northeast of Atlanta, as a practical demonstration of how the coverings, at 90-plus degree temperatures, can help insulate the helmet from outside heat. (Miller says that NFL testing has backed this up.)
Bearing an angel’s wing logo on the front, the black-walled building is a 90,000-square-foot facility that Guardian Sports splits with The Hanson Group. Together it is a family operation in the most literal sense: Out of close to 50 employees between the two sides, 10 are members of the Hanson clan, including three of Erin and Lee’s now-five children and two sons-in-law.
It took almost a full decade for Guardian Sports to become financially self-sustaining, and even longer to finish paying back The Hanson Group for the seven-figure costs of external lab testing and an early bulk purchase of more than 100,000 caps—that happened just last year. But the bustling scene suggests that business is good today. In the warehouse, towering stacks of Guardian Caps inventory have overtaken what was once an employee exercise area, like cubed cardboard weeds. In the loading dock, a truck drops off a fresh supply of green and maroon caps air-shipped from the company’s factory in Dongguan, China after their stockpile of those colors ran out.
When it comes to the Guardian Cap, the XTs sell for about $70 at retail stores and online but less than $55 in group orders for teams, while the NXTs are only sold direct to teams at an average of $100 apiece. According to the company, some 77 percent of its overall sales happens in bulk. But only a small portion of that total—about 200,000 caps sold this year, the company projects—comes from the NFL’s 32 teams, each of which typically stocks about 100 per season, replacing them every one to two years depending on the position and wear.
Not counting the cost of NFL testing through Biocore, though, Erin says Guardian has “never received a dime” directly from the league. Adds Lee, “They own the data too—only when they publish it, we get to see it.” But the benefit of having a public stamp of approval in the shape of the NFL shield is obvious.
“We had to have outside validation, and that’s what the NFL has done for us,” Erin says. “You can’t put a value on the marketing that you get from your product. But they’re not writing us checks, that’s for sure.”
Ann C. McKee, director of Boston University’s CTE Center and chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System, analyzes brain tissue on May 31, 2017.Photograph: Stan Grossfeld; The Boston Globe/Getty
On the flip side, the company has already done more for the NFL than its owners ever imagined. “The last thing we ever wanted to be in was the customization business,” Erin says, referring to the nine months it took to create the Guardian Cap pinnies that matched the helmets of every team so they could be worn in games this season. Between designing the concepts, conducting testing through Biocore, enlisting two college teams (Colorado and Georgia) to pilot them at spring practice, and ensuring the proper pantones and logos—all but four sent the initial batch back, including the Carolina Panthers, who requested that the silver pinnie “sparkle more,” Erin says—every step was geared toward aesthetic goals. Asked if it was a necessary headache to collaborate with the league, Lee replies immediately: “Yes.”
Adds Erin, “If it allows a player who feels like he's getting the same benefit in a game as in practice, then it's worth it.”
To this end, Guardian recently completed production on versions 2.0 of both the XT and NXT caps, featuring flatter, more helmetlike exteriors onto which teams can iron on logo decals. “The barriers to gameplay, I think, are the lack of gameplay testing data and the aesthetics,” says chief operating officer Jake Hanson, Erin and Lee’s son. “The more we can get at those with the 2.0s, the better.”
Given the relative lack of caps in NFL stadiums so far this season, it seems unlikely that they can catch on as a widespread gameday add-on. But even their future in practice remains uncertain. “The Guardian Cap could be a transition as we move from good helmets to better helmets, as that technology continues to improve,” Miller says.
That time might already be here: Entering this season, Biocore approved six new helmet models that would allow any player who wore one to be exempt from the Guardian Cap practice mandate. And more than 200 players have already taken advantage of the carve-out, “an unprecedented rate of adoption for a new piece of equipment,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills said on a media call in early October.
To both the lab and the league, the decision here boiled down to incentivizing players to use better-performing helmets.
“Decreasing benefit to wearing it, to the point where some of the technology that the helmets have now made the addition of a Guardian Cap on top of it of less utility than it would’ve been with one of the other helmets,” Miller says, when asked why the coverings were made optional at all. “And eventually you get to the plus-minus of, well, you’re adding a bunch of ounces to your head.”
Should the Hansons buck the odds once more and become a bigger NFL game-day presence down the line, it might be former players turned coaches leading the way. Like Manning. Or former running back and fellow Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis, an early proponent who bought Guardian Caps for an Atlanta-area youth football league that he and ex-Pittsburgh Steelers teammate Tim Lester started for their sons in the mid-2010s.
“You'll get these comments about, how can you put these things in the game?” Erin says. “Then you have interactions with people who are actually living the repercussions, it's a whole different thing.”
As for one of the few current players to have embraced the Guardian Caps in games, the Colts’ Granson doesn’t see himself stopping anytime soon.
“A big hit’s gonna happen—that’s the inevitability of the game,” he says. “But if I can reduce the contact of the little hits, then that’ll spare me down the road.”